That hurt my poor old brain, I think I'll be back in the exam room for the October 09 sitting Missed out two 5 mark questions completely, otherwise got something down for everything else. Thoughts? (remember not to be too specific)
Well, I've spent a lot of time revising for this exam and I found that fairly horrific. I felt as though the examiner this time pulled out all the stops to make this one of the most confusing and pitfall ridden exams to date. Oh well on to the next!
I missed out 3 x 5 mark questions too. I thought it was a very unfair exam time pressure wise. There is no way I'd ever be able to do it all in the time allotted. (unless I missed some tricks somewhere). Out of the two exams I'm taking I thought this would be the easy one. GRRRRrrrrr
I didn't enjoy that at all, particularly the Marriage, Surrender, Endowment Assurance contract question (I think it was Q13) and the Reversionary Annuity question.
Well, looks like you've all done better than me - I managed to miss out about 25 marks as I spent so long on the last question (about an hour).. doesn't look very hopeful for me I think I can only afford to get about 10 marks wrong to be able to pass which is extremely unlikely. Why were all the questions derivations and from first principles with forces of mortality and random interest rates?!
It's good to know that I am not the only one who felt this way. Having sent several months studying for this exam every day, when I opened the paper I felt I did not touch the books at all!!! Sitting 3 this time and also thought based on the past papers and the amount of revision I had done it would be the easy one.
ya i felt the same, studied loads for this one and am doing 3, this one was meant to be the easy one, they tried to catch you out at every turn....well here's hoping september will be a "normal" exam again!!
the paper was doable........if we has access to excel. some of the the questions were so long and laborious ----and just a check of our number-crunching aBILITY and they sucked up the time of questions that required thought and conceptulization. i cannot believe in my dreams that even one single person would have managed to complete the full paper. NOT a balanced paper......
Definitely not do-able in 3,25 hours (15min reading time). I missed the second part of the last question (and if you're wondering, I didn't come close to the premium in the first part). I also waffled on a bit in some of the prior questions (especially that derivation!!!). AND WHERE THE HECK WAS THIELE'S DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION AND THE LAST CHAPTER ON CRUDE/STANDARDIZED MORT. RATES!! Spent so much time trying to get to grips with Thiele's diff eqn, only to acquire a basic understanding, and when the exam arrives, they kindly skip the section completely. Some of the questions were ok, managed to complete the death, surrender, marriage question, but my methodolgy looked a little suspect... Anyway, leave it in God's hands now... Good Luck everybody
We certainly don't get reading time for the CTs in the UK. I had no idea anyone did get reading time for them - is that fair?
didn't really like the paper. What was with the Marriages/Divorce question?! It was just so long and complicated. Time will tell....
Goku, ASSA exams timetable clearly states that reading time only provided for CA, ST & SA subjects - are you just winding everyone up or did the invigilators really mess up that badly? I'd be a bit concerned if they did (as I'd pressume the board of examiners would like to investigate)...
Hey Meldemon, ok I admit, it was a lil goof...yeh, no reading time is clearly stated in the Actauries.org exam guide lines, and our invigilators are very much aware of this. On a more serious note, we did get about 10min to write down our details, that clearly is allowed. Sorry guys, was just a lil teaser...now I'm really dreading the exam results deadline, just don't wanna sit this one again...
For the marriage-surrender question, I used the indep rates provided to obtain dep rates (based on the assumption of uniform decrements in the single dec tables). The surrender and marriage rates were constants, and I obtained the death rates from the table specified. I used these to determine the expected value of all of the benefits...that was the only way I could think of.
