How long should I study for FRM Part I?

Plan on steady study over several months, and longer if the quant or the markets material is new to you. The 6-month plan above is built for someone working full time with a quantitative background, so stretch or compress it from there.

How many practice questions should I do for FRM Part I?

Aim for 2,000 or more before exam day, with at least 3 full-length 4-hour mocks in the last month. GARP includes 2 complimentary practice exams with Part I registration.

What order should I study FRM Part I topics in?

Follow GARP's order. Start with Foundations of Risk Management, which sets up the framework, then Quantitative Analysis, since you'll reuse that math everywhere, then Financial Markets and Products, then Valuation and Risk Models. Save mixed practice and full mocks for the last month.

Should I read the GARP books or use a third-party prep provider?

Both have a place. The GARP books are the authoritative source, and every Exam question maps to a stated learning objective. Third-party Exam Preparation Providers (EPPs) condense the material and add structured practice. If you're disciplined and have 6 months, GARP Learning plus a good free question bank is enough.

What calculator can I use on the FRM Exam?

GARP allows only the Texas Instruments BA II Plus (and BA II Plus Professional), the Hewlett Packard 12C (including the Platinum, 25th Anniversary, 30th Anniversary and Prestige editions), the HP 10B II, the HP 10B II+ and the HP 20B (GARP). Any other calculator may result in your Exam not being graded.

When are the 2026 FRM Part I exam windows?

GARP offers Part I in three 2026 windows: May 9 to 15, August 7 to 8 (AM session only) and November 14 to 20 (GARP). May and August have passed, and November is too close for a full 6-month plan if you're starting now, so you'd either shorten the plan or aim for a 2027 window. GARP hasn't published its 2027 dates yet. Pick a window first, then plan your 6 months back from that date.

GARP FRM Part I 6-Month Study Plan: A Week-by-Week Path to Exam Day

FRM Part I is a 4-hour, 100-question multiple-choice exam covering Foundations of Risk Management, Quantitative Analysis, Financial Markets and Products, and Valuation and Risk Models (GARP). This plan budgets about 275 hr of study. GARP's own figure is lower: its May 2015 survey of FRM candidates found an average of about 240 hours, with individual figures from under 100 to more than 400 hours (GARP).

If you work full time and have a quantitative background, I'd plan on 6 months: 24 weeks of study at 10 to 15 hours a week, which adds up to about 275 hours, plus 2 spare weeks for the weeks when life gets in the way. The last 4 study weeks are mock exams.

GARP runs Part I in May, August and November. The 2026 windows are May 9 to 15, August 7 to 8 (AM session only), and November 14 to 20 (GARP). May and August have passed, and November is less than 26 weeks away, so if you're starting this plan now you're aiming at 2027. GARP hasn't published the 2027 dates yet, and a 2027 sitting uses the 2027 study materials, which GARP releases on December 1. Pick a window, count back 26 weeks, and that's your start date.

Topic weights and hours

Part I isn't weighted evenly across the four topic areas, so your hours shouldn't be either.

Scroll horizontally to view all columns.

Topic area	GARP weight	When	Hours (of ~275)
Foundations of Risk Management	20%	Month 1	~40
Quantitative Analysis	20%	Month 2	~48
Financial Markets and Products	30%	Months 3 and 4	~70
Valuation and Risk Models	30%	Months 4 and 5	~58
Mixed practice and 3+ mock exams	n/a	Month 6	~60

Financial Markets and Products and Valuation and Risk Models are 60% of the exam between them, so they get almost half the study hours and all of months 3 through 5. Don't cut them short to buy back time on the first two topic areas.

If you're coming from outside risk management (technology, consulting, accounting, an industrial corporate role), the curriculum introduces vocabulary and institutional context that working risk managers pick up on the job. Plan extra time on Financial Markets and Products in months 3 and 4, and work through the GARP books slowly rather than skimming a condensed third-party guide. If you have a quantitative background but no markets exposure, the math months (1, 2 and the VaR and GARCH part of month 5) will feel comfortable and the products months won't, so shift hours from distributions and regression to institutional mechanics.

The plan, month by month

Month 1: Foundations of Risk Management (20%)

Plan on about 10 hours a week. Foundations is the easiest topic area to underestimate. CAPM, MPT, ERM and governance read as intuitive, so candidates skim them, and then the exam asks application questions and the gaps show. The financial disasters readings look like trivia, but the exam tests what failed and why (governance breakdown, model risk, leverage, liquidity, fraud), and those failures come back as application questions in later topic areas, so read them for the pattern, not the dates.

Week 1: risk types, the risk management process, creating value with risk management, credit risk transfer. 50 practice questions.
Week 2: CAPM, APT, multifactor models, risk-adjusted performance measures (Sharpe, Treynor, Jensen, information ratio). 75 questions.
Week 3: risk governance and corporate governance, ERM, data aggregation and risk reporting, financial disasters (LTCM, Barings, Metallgesellschaft, Societe Generale). 75 questions.
Week 4: ethics and the GARP Code of Conduct, plus an integrated review. Finish every Foundations practice question you have.

Month 2: Quantitative Analysis (20%)

This is the heaviest math month, at about 12 hours a week. Quant is only 20% of Part I, but distributions, regression, time series and simulation sit underneath VaR, GARCH, expected shortfall and almost every Valuation and Risk Models topic. Get fluent with the BA II Plus on distribution functions, hypothesis tests and regression output, since there's no partial credit for the right approach with the wrong number.

Week 5: discrete and continuous distributions (Bernoulli, binomial, Poisson, normal, lognormal, t, F, chi-square), parameter estimation (method of moments, MLE), population versus sample statistics and the central limit theorem. 80 questions.
Week 6: inference and hypothesis testing, Bayesian analysis, correlation. 80 questions.
Week 7: linear regression with single and multiple regressors, and diagnostics (heteroskedasticity, autocorrelation, multicollinearity, omitted variables). 100 questions.
Week 8: time series (AR, MA, ARMA, ARIMA), simulation (Monte Carlo, bootstrap, historical simulation), machine learning (supervised versus unsupervised, common algorithms, cross-validation, overfitting). 100 questions, plus a topic-only practice exam.

Month 3: Financial Markets and Products, first half

Financial Markets and Products is tied with Valuation and Risk Models as the biggest topic area at 30%, and it's the most institutional one, so it gets month 3 and most of month 4, at 10 hours a week. If you sit on a trading desk or in treasury, this is the month you can compress. If you don't, slow down, because margin, settlement and clearing are tested in a level of detail that people who do the job already know and everyone else has to study.

Week 9: how banks, insurance companies, mutual funds, hedge funds and pension funds are structured and what they do. 80 questions.
Week 10: OTC versus exchange markets, central counterparties (CCPs) and clearing, futures markets, margin and marking to market. 80 questions.
Week 11: hedging with futures (basis risk, cross-hedging, stack-and-roll). 80 questions.
Week 12: FX risk, FX forwards and FX swaps, plus a review of the month. 80 questions.

Month 4: Finish Financial Markets and Products, start Valuation

Stay at 10 hours a week. Learn the market view behind each option strategy, not just its payoff diagram, because the exam tests the view. "You expect low volatility but are uncertain on direction" should point you to a short straddle or short strangle without flipping back to a chart.

Week 13: forwards and futures pricing (cost of carry, convenience yield), swaps. 80 questions.
Week 14: options markets and payoffs, basic strategies (covered call, protective put, collar, straddle, strangle, butterfly, condor), exotic options (barrier, Asian, lookback, binary). 80 questions.
Week 15: interest rate sensitivity (DV01, modified duration, key rate duration), corporate bonds, mortgage-backed securities and prepayment risk. 80 questions.
Week 16: the three VaR methods (parametric, historical simulation, Monte Carlo), VaR's limitations and an introduction to expected shortfall. 60 questions.

Month 5: Valuation and Risk Models

Go up to 12 hours a week. This is the hardest theory month and the one most likely to expose gaps from Quantitative Analysis, so if your regression or distribution work is shaky, catch up early in the month. GARCH and EWMA show up every administration. Be able to work out the next-period variance estimate by hand from a sample of returns, since the BA II Plus won't do it for you.

Week 17: the rest of VaR (mapping, decomposition, marginal, component and incremental VaR), expected shortfall, coherent risk measures. 100 questions.
Week 18: GARCH, EWMA, implied volatility and its term structure, external and internal credit ratings, transition matrices. 100 questions.
Week 19: expected and unexpected loss, operational risk and the Basel approaches, stress testing and scenario analysis, country and sovereign risk. 100 questions.
Week 20: the Black-Scholes-Merton model, the Greeks (delta, gamma, vega, theta, rho), economic and regulatory capital. 100 questions, plus a full topic-area mock.

Month 6: Mixed practice and mock exams

Put in about 15 hours a week. The goal is at least 3 full 4-hour mocks and a clean error log, because you need full-length timed practice to use what you learned in months 1 through 5 under exam conditions.

Week 21: first full mock (4 hours, 100 questions). Score it and log every miss as a content gap, an application error or timing pressure.
Week 22: drill the weakest topic from that mock, then take a second full mock at the end of the week.
Week 23: drill the weakest topic from the second mock, then take a third.
Week 24 (exam week): light review, with no new material in the last 5 days. Sleep, drill your calculator keystrokes and read your error log one last time.

GARP includes 2 complimentary full-length practice exams with Part I registration (GARP), in GARP Learning, so use both. For the third, FreeFellow's Fellow tier has timed full-length Part I mocks, or you can buy a practice exam from a third-party prep provider.

Keep your error log in one document with three columns: the topic, what you thought, and what was correct and why. You should have 200+ entries by the end of month 6. Read the whole log twice in the final week, since the second read usually turns up patterns the first missed, like repeatedly mixing up which VaR method assumes normality. Aim for 2,000+ practice questions across the six months, but don't chase the number. Working 1,500 questions carefully with a good error log does more for you than skimming 3,000.

Exam-day logistics and materials

GARP permits only these calculators (GARP):

Texas Instruments BA II Plus (including the BA II Plus Professional)
Hewlett Packard 12C (including the 12C Platinum, 12C Platinum 25th Anniversary, 12C 30th Anniversary and HP 12C Prestige)
Hewlett Packard 10B II
Hewlett Packard 10B II+
Hewlett Packard 20B

Any other calculator may result in your Exam not being graded. Clear the memory before the exam and don't bring a backup that isn't on the list.

You need a current, non-expired, original, government-issued passport or driver's license with a photograph (GARP), with the name matching your Confirmation of Appointment email exactly. Digital identification isn't accepted. No personal belongings, electronic devices or wearable technology (Fitbits, smart glasses, smartwatches) are allowed in the exam room. Your phone has to be fully off in the locker, since airplane mode isn't enough, and a phone that makes any sound during the Exam ends your session, ungraded.

For materials, GARP Learning comes with Part I registration and covers the full curriculum plus the 2 practice exams. The GARP Study Guide is a free summary of the recommended readings with key concepts and learning objectives, and the GARP LinkedIn FRM Candidate Group is a free way to find people to study with. If you want more questions than that, FreeFellow's FRM Part I bank is free with an account: 1,076 questions with step-by-step solutions, plus 31 written lessons. The timed mocks, focus practice on weak topics and analytics are in Fellow. The free FRM study materials roundup sorts out which resources are public and which come with GARP registration.