CFP test takers who have passed other insurance or NASD-administered securities exams may feel that those will serve as material preparation for the CFP exam. But nothing could be farther from the truth. While some of the same material is covered on both types of tests, the knowledge required is applied quite differently for the CFP exam. Get acquainted with a few tips that will help you as you study:
1. Do not focus on memorizing concepts. Licensing exam tests simply quiz the test taker on his or her retention of the material. The Certified Financial Planner exam demands much more of the student, requiring not only knowledge of the material, but also the ability to correctly synthesize and apply it to actual financial planning situations.

Generally, the methods of study used by many for licensing exams may be counterproductive when preparing for the CFP board exam. While students need to memorize a lot when preparing for both the former and latter tests, students who do no more than this to prepare for the CFP exam will be quite unprepared.

2. Learn the CFP board's reasoning. A lot of students will have difficulty understanding how the CFP Board arrives at an answer that it considers to be "correct", as the student would never view the answer to a particular question that way in an actual planning scenario. The Certified Financial Planner Board has a specific rationale that it uses to reason out the answers to its test questions, and this rationale must be understood and applied correctly by the student in order to pass the exam.

3. Aim for the achieving the best grade possible. This kind of exam itself also differs from licensing tests in that there is no specific percentage "grade", such as 70%, that must be achieved in order to pass. A few weeks after the test is taken, the student simply receives a "pass" or "fail" response in the mail.