I am glad that someone brought this up. The older threads are lost in the sea of sajha guffs and we need fresh inputs. I registered for the first exam TBH in june 06. I looked through the material, and the first exam should not be hard, at the same time that doesn't mean that it's going to be easy either. As for the second one, they say it's the hardest, with (so i heard) only 20% of passing rate, it's a good thing you can retake the exam again eh! As for my background, I recently graduated in economics and concentrated in corporate finance, I also did quant finance that included forecasting and modeling. So, if you are taking the first CFA exam like me.. maybe we can share notes.