Which P papers to start with?

You can take them in whatever order you like, but there are advantages to taking in a sequence.

I’d say take P1 first, because all other P exams will have ethics in them, and having P1 knowledge, will make those 4-6 ethics marks (which you will get in every exam) relatively straightforward to obtain, and could make the difference between a pass and a fail. You’d be surprised how many people on these forums get 46-49 marks.

You could take P2 or P3 after as there’s little to no overlap between the two and knowledge from one won’t really benefit you with the other.

I’d do the options last. The pass rates suggest that they are more difficult than P1-3, and it might be psychologically better to get those 3 out of the way, should you fail an optional exam. That way you still know there end of the tunnel is still close by.

As someone who sat both P4 and P6, it really makes no difference which one you do first. I did P6 first only because I really enjoyed tax, and after sitting P3 (which I hated), I wanted a unit I enjoyed studying. If I was better at F9 than F6, I’d have done P4 first.

What I would say is if you wanted to do P5 or P7, you should DEFINITELY do P1 and P3 first because there is a lot of overlap between P3 and P5, and between P1 and P7.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

@latoyah84 said:

P4 may look for likely to you since you just completed F9 and even though i am told there is not much overlap there will be some similarities so sitting it first may be best for you.

This is not exactly true. There is a lot of overlap between the two papers, but P4 does introduce some new material such as option pricing with the Black-Scholes model. There is a lot of expansion on certain models such as DCF / NPV / Valuation / Currency and the treasury function.

There is some content that doesn’t appear in P4, such as market efficiency and certain discussion around managing working capital / capital finance. This may just be because its assumed knowledge and will form some part of a discussion question.

I found F9 to be very broad and P4 to be much more specific. It concentrated mainly on project valuation / option pricing / interest and currency risk and business valuation. Other aspects taught and examined are dividend policy, financial reconstruction, the treasury function and recent developments.

Its a very tough paper, but it wasn’t as hard to study as I thought it would be. I wasn’t particularly great at F9, so I was expecting it to be much more difficult to relearn, but it wasn’t.

In addition, the level of overlap is very different to F6 and P6, where almost EVERYTHING in F6 is examined within P6 to some extent. Specific things such as what is or is not taxable for income tax don’t feature, but almost everything else is examinable.