re: CFA prep courses

I studied for about three months for Level I, but was actively involved in finance by that time which made certain sections, particularly Equity and FSA, relatively easy to fly through.

There's no magic number, but they typically advise you to put in 300 hours which is ironic, given no one in finance actually has that much free time to devote to this test.

You could spend 100 or less hours purely taking practice problems and crush Level One.