CFA - Path to a bright finance career

The craze for IIMs is mainly due to the huge salaries they offer. In order to get a clear picture about the packages and stuff, I enquired with couple of my friends who graduated from IIMs. They said that only        5-10% of students actually end up with good salaries.
The students who end up with handsome salaries have very good profiles like..
i) They are among the top bunch of the class
ii) They are active in the clubs and activities of college. Organising fests, participating and winning in B-School events and competetions, being a placecomm member etc
ii) Have a very good past work experience. Say managed a consultancy or started own firm or business
iv) Cleared global financial certifications like CFA, FRM etc

A person who cleared all the three levels of CFA and has done MBA from top B-School would get job profiles like Equity Research, Investment Banks, Portfolio Mgmt.
Overview of CFA:The CFA Program includes a series of three exams that are offered in test centers around the world. These three exams — Level I, Level II, and Level III  must be passed sequentially for earning a CFA charter.
The Level I exam consists of multiple choice questions and is offered in June and December.
The Level II exam is composed of item set questions and is offered in June only.
The Level III exam consists of item set and essay questions and is offered in June only.

Generally Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi are centres in India for CFA exams. Passport is compulsory for enrollment and registration for the exam. The approximate fees for enrolment for Level 1 exam is 50000Rs.

FOCUS:
Level1 :- Finance Foundations
Level2 :- Investment Analysis
Level3 :- Portfolio Management


December 2011 Exam Schedule (Level I only)
Mid-January:        December exam registration opens
Mid-March:         First deadline to enroll and register for the December exam
Mid-August:         Second deadline to enroll and register for the December exam
Mid-September:   Final deadline to enroll and register for the December exam
3-4 Dec:              Exam days

June 2012 Exam Schedule (Levels I, II, and III)
Mid-July:              June exam registration opens
Mid-September:   First deadline to enroll and register for the December exam
Mid-February:      Second deadline to enroll and register for the December exam
Mid-March:          Final deadline to enroll and register for the December exam
4-5 June:              Exam days

Piece of advice for those who want to register to L1:
Go through schweser notes( easily available on the net) before registering just to check up whether you are interested in studying/reading for L1
Start your preparations early
Institutes that offer CFA training:
1) Pristine Careers
http://www.edupristine.com/
2) P.A.C.E (Finance Training Solutions)

http://www.pacegurus.com/

3) Ace3Levels

 http://ace3levels.com/

.Net and SQL Interview Questions

What is the difference between connected environment and disconnected environment
Give an example of disconnected environment.
What are the new features in .Net 4.0
What are the new features in SQL 2008 when compared to SQL 2005
How do you install a Windows service and how do you start it
How to create a msi for a Windows application
Can there be more than 1 web.config file for a project
Which is better. Cookie or session
Where will the cookies be saved
Where will the session be saved
What is the max no of cookies that can be created. What is the max length of cookie
What is diff b/w user control and Master page
What is diff b/w varchar and nvarchar
What is a partial class
What is diff b/w class and partial class
Explain Life cycle of a page
What is diff b/w Page_PreInit and Page_Init
What is diff b/w Page_Unload and Page_Dispose
What is the extension of Linq in .Net
Write a sample program to read data from List and find the unique values and load the data into database using LINQ
What is difference between assembly and dll?

1. We need to display the following information for the employees who are working
for some departments.
employee number
employee name
department number
department name

Which of the following queries will give the desired output?
(i) SELECT EmpNo,EName,DeptNo,DName
FROM Emp, Dept
WHERE Emp.DeptNo = Dept.DeptNo;
(ii) SELECT Emp.EmpNo, Emp.EName, Dept.DeptNo, Dept.DName
FROM Emp E, Dept D
WHERE Emp.DeptNo = Dept.DeptNo;
(iii) SELECT Emp.EmpNo, Emp.EName, Dept.DeptNo, Dept.DName
FROM Emp, Dept
WHERE Emp.DeptNo = Dept.DeptNo;

2. Consider the following statements
I. UNPIVOT doesn’t result in the original table which was PIVOTed.
II. PIVOT performs aggregation and merges MULTIPLE rows into SINGLE
row.
Which of the following choices is correct?
a) Both (i) and (ii) are correct
b) Only (i) is correct
c) Only (ii) is correct
d) Neither of the statements is correct

3. Consider the following statements
i. CTEs exist only in the span of the execution of the query and not anymore.
ii. Temporary views are not really temporary since the structure is
stored in the database permanently
iii. Recursive CTEs are created by referencing the defined CTE after the UNION
ALL clause
Which of the following choices is correct with respect to the above statements?
i) Only (i) and (ii)
ii) Only (ii) and (iii)
iii) Only (i) and (iii)
iv) All the three choices

4. A person develops two different applications using .NET 2.0 which communicate with each other. Now, the same applications are upgraded with .NET 3.0 and hence they share information. Which technology in .NET 3.0 is used?
(i) WPF
(ii) WF
(iii) WCS
(iv) WCF