Free PDF · 81 pages
CFA Level 1 Glossary Recall Sheet
516 terms, ten topics, four weekly passes. If you are preparing for CFA Level 1, there is a very good chance you will forget most of what you are studying. This is the sheet that tells you exactly which parts.
How glossary recall works
Rereading your notes feels like studying and mostly is not. Retrieval — dragging something out of memory without a prompt — is what actually makes it stick. This is that idea applied to terminology, which is where CFA Level 1 punishes you first.
- 1
Finish a topic, then wait a week
The gap is the point. Testing yourself while the material is still fresh measures your short-term memory, not your retention.
- 2
Read the term. Don't read the definition.
Cover Part 2. Look at a term — say, Duration — and ask yourself: what do I know about this?
- 3
Explain it out loud, from memory
Maybe you remember everything. Maybe half. Maybe nothing at all. That is fine, and it is the information you came for.
- 4
Mark it, then review what you missed
Tick the box if you got it cold. Anything blank or half-remembered goes straight back to your study material.
Do this three or four times and your recall gets noticeably stronger. The only progress signal that matters is your blank column shrinking week over week.
Every topic on the Level 1 syllabus
Terms were pulled from the current curriculum and then checked against OneQuest's CFA Level 1 question bank, so the list leans toward what gets examined rather than what merely appears in a textbook.
- Fixed Income81
- Financial Statement Analysis58
- Portfolio Management55
- Alternative Investments52
- Derivatives51
- Equity Investments50
- Quantitative Methods49
- Economics43
- Ethical and Professional Standards39
- Corporate Issuers38
516 terms in total, across ten topics.
Inside the sheet
Questions people ask
- Is it free?
- Yes. It costs an email address. You get the full PDF immediately, and CFA study material and exam updates from OneQuest afterwards. You can unsubscribe at any time.
- What is glossary recall?
- It is active recall applied to terminology. Instead of rereading your notes, you look at a term with the definition hidden and try to explain it from memory. Every term you struggle to retrieve is a gap you have just found, and retrieval practice strengthens memory far more than rereading does.
- Why are the definitions at the back?
- So you cannot cheat by accident. If the definition sits next to the term, your eye reads it before your memory tries to produce it, and the whole exercise collapses into rereading.
- How long does one pass take?
- Roughly 15 to 25 minutes per topic once you know the material, and considerably longer the first time. You work one topic at a time, not the whole sheet in one sitting.
- Where do the terms come from?
- Every term was checked against OneQuest's own CFA Level 1 question bank — nearly 6,000 questions and their explanations — so the list reflects what actually gets tested rather than a generic glossary dump. All 516 terms map to the current curriculum's ten topics.
- Do I need a OneQuest account?
- No. Enter your email and the download starts. An account is only needed if you later want the mock tests and practice questions.
Recall tells you what you remember. A mock tells you what you can do.
Knowing a definition cold is not the same as answering a timed question about it. Take a free CFA Level 1 mock test — no sign-up needed — and see how much of this holds up under exam conditions.
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