• We are pleased to announce that the winner of our Feedback Prize Draw for the Winter 2024-25 session and winning £150 of gift vouchers is Zhao Liang Tay. Congratulations to Zhao Liang. If you fancy winning £150 worth of gift vouchers (from a major UK store) for the Summer 2025 exam sitting for just a few minutes of your time throughout the session, please see our website at https://www.acted.co.uk/further-info.html?pat=feedback#feedback-prize for more information on how you can make sure your name is included in the draw at the end of the session.
  • Please be advised that the SP1, SP5 and SP7 X1 deadline is the 14th July and not the 17th June as first stated. Please accept out apologies for any confusion caused.

April 2012

R

RaViShankar

Member
The exam was really bad for me, does anyone know what the pass mark for the CT's is?I think the IoA/FoA should let us know.

Also i'm from South Africa and was wondering since our exams for CT'S are set by the IoA/FoA does this mean they are also marked by IoA/FoA and not ASSA?

This is because normally we aren't a lot of people and I'm wondering how the pass rate is decided?

for the exam, i think i managed some questions but totally got screwed on Q8, and the last parts of Q9 and 7.

Does anyone think it was harder than last years?
 
The pass mark varies depending on how examiners feel about the paper, but a consensus seems to be it's around 60-65% (which is consistent with university exams in identical subjects).

The exam you take is *always* harder than any past paper ;)
 
Passed CT8 in October. It had about 50% of the paper made up of repeat questions from 2001 October paper. Noticed that CT8 paper is the only paper in CT series that actualy has repeat questions (word by word), so worth going over the past papers and memorizing the answers. I actually didn't remember the solution to one of the questions, so just wrote down the answer and fundged the steps a bit. ;) Good luck to everyone!
 
The 2011 September Examiner's report said, if I remember well that
'' the best candidates scored close to full marks''
Click to expand...
....This year's paper had the ''normal CT8'' questions and new questions. I doubt if the Examiner's report will say the Best candidates scored close to full marks again.

What do people think the pass mark will be??

Wish I wrote last October.
 
I struggled with the paper badly?

- for binomial q the one node had two up movements and not the usual one up and down - how do you do this?

- totally flaked on VAR question

- how do you calculate the solution for the Vasiciek Model?
 
the solution to vasicek model is a bookwork question appearing in chapter 16 and addressed in chapter 8

it was probably the only question i could do :(
 
That was a painful 3 hours, even question 1 was hard for me.

I was wondering ''what does observation of Option prices reveal about assumptions of the Black-Scholes and properties of Brownian motion'' or ''did they mean share prices'' or ''I'M I VERY, VERY STUPID''??

I failed.Ha,ha,ha....

Paper now on the web.
 
I struggled as well.

I screwed up the VAR question, the Vasicek question, the Black-Scholes question, but think I got the rest down okay.

Think I'll get FB (again) though.
Tough paper.. :)

But if there's one thing I've learned studying Actuarial, its that pride and gets you nowhere, back to the books for me! I'll eventually get there :)

Luckily CT4 was easy.
 
How did you do question 1 (iii) ''what does observation of Option prices reveal about assumptions of the Black-Scholes and properties of Brownian motion''?

I screwed up the VAR question, the Vasicek question, the Black-Scholes question, but think I got the rest down okay.
Click to expand...

don't you think with just these few errors you can get a 60%.

But if there's one thing I've learned studying Actuarial, its that pride and gets you nowhere
Click to expand...

did you used to have a lot of pride. I agree though, it's humbling!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
RaViShankar said:
How did you do question 1 (iii) ''what does observation of Option prices reveal about assumptions of the Black-Scholes and properties of Brownian motion''?
Click to expand...
I basically handled Q1 as:
i) - list assumptions
ii) - list assumptions
iii) - Explain criticism of these assumptions, focusing on share prices (these and "option" prices can be handled as being the same thing, and option prices allows discussion of interest rates and arbitrage as well)

Don't you think with just these few errors you can get a 60%.
Click to expand...
Nope, I missed easy bookwork marks, and panicked and probably made lots of errors. Missed some points I could've said on Q10 as well. I don't really deserve to pass yet, I know 70% of the work well, and crammed the other 30%, so I'm okay with a fail mark for now.

did you used to have a lot of pride. I agree though, it's humbling!
Click to expand...
Yup, I'm one of those people that never failed anything until I started ActSci.
It takes me an average of 2.5 attempts to pass any subject, but hopefully, the CTs will be done Oct. I'm falling straight into ST2 from next week as well.
 
cpelser said:
I basically handled Q1 as:
i) - list assumptions
ii) - list assumptions
iii) - Explain criticism of these assumptions, focusing on share prices
Click to expand...
I did the same as well, however i think the wording was wrong they should have said share prices directly, Options have non-linear relations with some of those assumptions + Options range from Vanilla to exotic.
Nope, I missed easy bookwork marks, and panicked and probably made lots of errors. Missed some points I could've said on Q10 as well. I don't really deserve to pass yet, I know 70% of the work well, and crammed the other 30%, so I'm okay with a fail mark for now.
Click to expand...
I also made some mistakes on the easier questions:eek:.
 
Calum said:
The pass mark varies depending on how examiners feel about the paper, but a consensus seems to be it's around 60-65% (which is consistent with university exams in identical subjects).

The exam you take is *always* harder than any past paper ;)
Click to expand...


The pass mark for CT8 is ~50%. I would say if you're getting around 53% then you are definitely home free. You are probably in with a chance if you get over 45%. You definitely do NOT need 60-65% to pass this exam, despite what ActEd / Institute say!
 
Faldoo said:
The pass mark for CT8 is ~50%. I would say if you're getting around 53% then you are definitely home free. You are probably in with a chance if you get over 45%. You definitely do NOT need 60-65% to pass this exam, despite what ActEd / Institute say!
Click to expand...

Faldoo that's comforting thanks Man, I think if it is so then I may get it. In the practise papers I wrote, I scored slightly above 60% most of the time and 50 - 60% when I started.

You definitely do NOT need 60-65% to pass this exam, despite what ActEd / Institute say!
Click to expand...

How did you know man?Thanks.
 
I was told the pass mark is ~50% by one of the ActEd tutors.

Also, when I sat CT8 (in April 2011), I left out about 25 marks worth of questioons and I still passed. When counting up the marks in my head, the maximum I could have possibly got was 57%, but this relied me getting everything I thought I got correct, correct!

In general and in my opinion, the pass marks are about:

CT1: 55%
CT2: 60%
CT3: 55%
CT4: 55%
CT5: 50%
CT6: 50%
CT7: 65%
CT8: 50%
CT9: 75%

CA1: 45%-50%
CA2: 65%
CA3: not sure (haven't sat this yet)

STs: 45%-50%
SAs: 40%
 
BTW I was writing through the ASSA with a couple of my friends and have no idea how they mark. Even though we wrote the same paper at the same time as the IoA/FoA students.

Is ASSA going to be marking the paper even though they didn't set it?

Thanks Faldoo
 
Geez this paper was seriously bad for me! It was my second attempt and last time I got an FA :( However I am pretty certain I failed outright this time around.

I think it was very different from past papers. I don't feel like doing the past exams in any way prepared me for that exam. It was tough! But maybe I am just stooopid haha :O
 
SABeauty said:
I struggled with the paper badly?

- for binomial q the one node had two up movements and not the usual one up and down - how do you do this?

- totally flaked on VAR question

- how do you calculate the solution for the Vasiciek Model?
Click to expand...

I did it as you normally would calculate it. It's just that for that particular arm d>1.

I got the first parts of the VAR question, the TailVAR I had no idea; I was happy to pull 5 marks from that question and then might have pulled another one in the calculation part at the end.

Valsiciek Model is Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. This question has been asked somewhere before, whether it be in a past exam or a question in the notes, I can't remember. I know I stuffed up the second moment, I wrote down the variance instead. Whoops!

Faldoo said:
I was told the pass mark is ~50% by one of the ActEd tutors.
Click to expand...

Maybe even less. I did September 2011, got an FA, but looking at the answers to that paper, there is NO WAY I got anywhere near 50%.

Good luck to everyone! Of the subjects I've done at university and the CTs I've done, this one has certainly been the most painful.
 
Ooohhh... Created another thread in error... CT8 again in September.. Pass rate looks good at 50.5% or so... Bit tired of this one....
 
Passed! Was my second attempt, definitely glad to see the back of this subject.

Hope you guys did well as well.
 
Just looked at the Examiner's report, I'm like w***???

I bet CT8 is even harder than some of the later subjects.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top