Am really sick of these exams What's the point of trying to remember lists that you are probably going to forget after the exams? And don't you think only getting half a mark for each point you write is very mean? - you pretty much have to write 200 points in 180 minutes. *sigh* Just a few more days to go... I do hope this will be my last ever exam as I really am getting very sick of it!!! Good luck everyone!
Its a system designed to filter out most people, so that only the truely anti-social and nerdy make it through ;-) Although this is all changing now that you can get all CT exemptions in a 1 year diploma and all of CA1 + ST exams in a 1 year masters at a selection of UK universities. So once you are finished, you will see lots of new shiny graduates qualifying after 6 months in their first job, and you will be wondering where all the fun years in your life disappeared to whilst you were slaving away learning lists... A few more years down the line, you will discover that the SOA / CAS in the States decide not to recognise the UK actuarial qualification due to the ease of gaining it (compared to around 10 years over there)... and suddenly you wonder why you bothered... Am i being unfair here?
I am also sick of them and after gaining exemptions, I only just wrote my second one (ST4) after passing CA1. Learning lists do seem pointless and 200 points does seem a bit much, I agree, but arguably you dont need to get 100%. Of course half of what you do write may be not on the examiner's mark sheet, because you took a different view on what they were asking. Gareth, you still need 3 years WBS to qualify, which is one of the reasons I didn't pursue one of those masters (the other being cost). Having now sat some exams, I think working 3 years without exams may be favourable. As a international person, I would be very upset if the American associations don't recognise the British qualifications, (all the other students in my office actually do SOA exams, though the actuaries are FIA). As far as I am aware, no exemptions are offered for their exams at all.
You would need to sit both courses together for 11 months! In any case, it's not good that it takes 8-10 years in the CAS / SOA and 2 years more or less guaranteed for a strong university student here. I can see the international value of FIA reducing to that of other European countries that do university based actuarial qualifications.
This came to my attention a while back when reading the glossy adverts in the Actuary magazine advertising fast track exemptions for particular courses. I wasn't aware there was a course that offers an exemption from all the CTs in one year. I'm sure it's appropriately expensive, but that certainly degrades the value of the exams if there is one available. Question is is whether employers will view this method of qualifying as valid? If there's no distinction the prudent option would be to take a loan and a year out and get the CTs in one year!
And considering lots of students get 4 CTs in their first year whilst working and earning money, is paying to do this course really such a good deal?
It would be interesting to anyone taking the Actuarial exams but not working for an Actuarial company, for example. (ie me) Can anyone link me to this course? Thanks.
http://www.cass.city.ac.uk/masters/courses/mscas/index.html £10.5K That would buy you a lot of tutorials! Why not just take a year out of work and study the ActEd stuff if you don't want to do it whilst working???
Hmm. What's the combined cost of all the course material etc across all of the CT exams?? Probably does come anywhere near that does it? I wasn't really serious. It was just rather intriguing. I have a fantastic job and have no intention of leaving, but it has nothing to do with Actuarial work so I get no study leave. The concept of getting most of the exams out of the way quicker sounded worth hearing!
That beside the point. The point is that they pass with a less rigorous academic exam. And who is with me for making a petition to submit to the president?
Do they? I'm not saying it's not true, I have no idea, but you have any proof they are easier? Personally I don't see why students on these courses can't take the same exams with the rest of us. It would seem easier and fairer all round.
I don't know how it works for the Masters at City, but I took the BSc Actuarial Science at city and got my 8 exemptions (because I worked bl**dy hard). I would imagine the process is similar, except they cover all the CTs in 1 year (or 2 years part time) as opposed to over 3 years, and they don't do as much coursework as we did. With the BSc, it's not the case of just taking the exams to get the exemption - to pass the exam and get through to the next year at uni you only needed 40%, but to get the exemption you had to get above 60-65% in the exam. I believe this is a higher pass mark because the exams are probably slightly easier than the institute's papers so they adjust the pass requirements accordingly. We still learnt the same material, based off the core reading. And as far as i knew, our papers all got second marked by an examiner from the institute, who would set the pass mark according to how the uni's exams compared to the institute exams. I think uni exams are deemed "easier" because one has to account for the fact that the same lecturer sets the papers every year, so more often than not, past papers have a similar format to what is likely to come out in the current paper, whereas this may not always be the case with institute papers. Additionally some people say the lecturers will tell you what's in the paper... unfortunately this isn't really true, but again I guess you could work it out from past papers. Note that not everyone in my year came out with all 8 exemptions - for a start only about 10 out of 100 students actually went on to work in actuarial jobs, and out of those 10, I would say maybe 6/7 had all 8 exemptions? And on another note, I worked a lot harder at uni (than I could ever do now!) - i was in the library between lectures, and even after lectures finished at 6pm, I would be in there til 10/11pm at night.... so I was pretty pleased to get all my exemptions (though I had to resit one subject to get exempted!)
my view uni exams - material + content more theretical and rigorous than IOA equivalent - encourages understanding and depth of thought - exams easier than IOA equivalent ( more predictable, less time pressure, less practical focus) IOA - core reading easier to understand than uni lecture - exam harder ( more time pressure, less predicatble exam, ambiguous wording, answers have to be presented in certain style etc) As the above poster said, you had to work hard to get all the exemptions. I agree with that statement - university demands rigour and understanding. work hard in uni, probability of getting exemptions is very very high. work as hard ( + show same degree of understanding) for equivalent IOA exams does not translate into same chance of success (even though pass mark lower). why? main reason is time pressure plus lottery of the exam!
Just looked at the price for the CMP materials plus Series X marking for CT3. It comes in at 219.73 for the marking (including VAT) and 120 for the CMP. Add 170 to that and you're looking at paying over 500 per CT subject, and that doesn't include a mock exam, contact with a tutor, the possibility of repeating an exam or the many other benefits of doing a university course (such as free supplemental exams). Suddenly the CASS fees don't look so expensive Thomas
Don't forget you have to pay for the exemptions at £144 per CT if you do the uni course, so that's another £1K.
Clearly University Exams are easier than Actuarial Exams and it's not fair at all. We've got people with all the Exemptions from their Uni's struglling to attain the qualification. But with this University Arrangement, soon there will be more Actuaries than people!
I think the perception that university exams are easier is mainly down to two things * people have much more time to study at uni and so are more likely to pass. * people coming out of university tend to have less work based skills and thus appear to be dimmer than the rest. Having done both, the main difference is really that the uni exams are a little easier to predict and plan for, as pass marks are known.
