City Graduate Speaking! Right I'm a City graduate currently working as a trainee actuary, having just taken my CA1 exam and I thought I'd share my experiences after reading all your posts. I did BSc Actuarial Science at City, and yes I was 18 when I started studying for the equivalent of the CT exams. Being at uni and studying full time is ALOT easier than working and studying. We had lectures from 9-5 most days, and on top of that an endless stream of courseworks, assignments, projects, especially in the 2nd and 3rd year of the course. On top of that, I used to also stay back after the last lecture, and go to the library to study, often up til 10pm at night, especially when the exams were near, in order to cover everything that was required (and to finish off courseworks!). As far as the exams were concerned, it's not as easy as passing the exam and getting an exemption straightaway. The uni pass mark for the exam is about 40%, HOWEVER in order to get an exemption you had to get about 60-65%, which I believe is about the same as the pass mark for the IoA CT subject exams. The lecturers are all qualified actuaries and most of them have worked as actuaries before coming into teaching. A few of them even write the core reading for some of the IoA subjects. So I would presume if the institute sees them as competent enough to write core reading, they would be competent enough to set decent exams. And like avanbuiten said, the exam papers have to be seen by the institute examiners before a pass mark for exemptions can be agreed. As far as I know the papers are marked at least twice - once by the lecturers at uni, and then a sample is marked by the IoA people, after which the rest of the exams are scaled up/down, depending on the difference between institute marking and uni marking (I think). The other thing you have to bear in mind about why it might be easier to pass exams at uni than with the institute is that often the paper is written by the lecturer who's teaching you the subject, and towards the exam, some of them are more likely to give you hints as to what might be in the paper. Also, for the ones that don't give hints, all past exam papers for the subject would most probably have been written by the same person, so the style and even the order and type of questions asked often follow a pattern. You don't get this with the IoA exams, as the papers are written by different people each time round. As for whether I gained anything from studying solely for 3 years, the answer is yes. I got a first, and exemptions from CT1-8, which I think are probably harder to study than the later subjects when you are in employment. I may not have had the experience in the actuarial field, but I certainly knew the basics. I went into employment at least understanding some actuarial principles, and could answer a lot of technical questions about actuarial theories, e.g. pricing and reserving (I was asked this in my interview and was told that I performed so well out of all the candidates they had to make up extra questions for me). As opposed to what some of my friends (who also graduated form City) tell me about people becoming actuarial consultants without the vaguest idea of actuarial knowledge. Mind you, when I was at City, I was advised against doing an MSc to get the 300/ST series. This was where the experience/study balance came into play - I was told that it'll be even harder to find employment if I had too many qualifications and not enough experience. Also, by the time we got to our 3rd year, most of the weaker candidates had already been weeded out - the number of people in my year had dropped from 110 to about 70. And just to give you an idea of the number of City graduates from my year who found employment: 70 of us graduated. About 30 of us got first class honours degrees. 7 of us are currently in actuarial employment. Of these 7, 3 of us have 1st class honours. I know of about 10-15 other people who are in employment, but as accountents/investment bankers/business analysts - they simple couldn't get jobs as trainee actuaries, but are hoping that in one year's time or so, they'll be able to find actuarial jobs. I had to apply to practically every single actuarial employer listed on the institute's website and go through about 50 rejections before I found my current job. So it's not as easy as it seems...
An interesting post Jeanneu. My one and only experience with a university actuarial student ( actually a Warwick Morse course) was a lad who got an exemption to 101 and 107 aged 20, CT4 and CT1 aged 21 and should get exemptions to CT2,CT6,CT8 this year aged 22. Last September he came to me looking for a Fourth year project to do and I suggested a project I had in mind to do myself on monetary policy and how it affects share prices. I showed him how to build a multiple regression model based on the data I sorted out for him. He is actually a pretty good student and went off dutifully and found a supervisor in his department, impressing on everybody the idea was his. I was a little surprised though that he knew very little monetary policy theory inspite of having a 107 exemption and also that he didn't know how to test whether a correlation coefficient was significant inspite of having a 101 exemption. Now I don't really like to base my opinions on a sample of one but this student is almost certainly going to get a First and has actuarial employers crawling all over him. I think I should also add that I have no axe to grind. I have never worked in an actuarial department and will probably never do so.
i remember in my maths degree, that I could achieve 90% in an exam by learning past papers for the last 8 years or so + all homework assignments, and this would be a route to a first class degree for many people. but in the IOA/FOA exams, it makes no difference how many past papers I do. I really have to understand the subject from start to finish, and although question practice helps, you will fail most exams without a deep understanding. Now, a few years after uni, I have forgotten most of my degree, yet a few years after the actuarial exams, I still remember 90% of the subject. That's because I had to really understand the subject, rather than just reproduce old exam questions, or the homework assignments from a lectuerer. I suspect this will be the reason that your actuarial student friend could not recall bits of the subjects he was exempt from. It's the level of understanding required for a uni exam versus the institute exams that may be the difference in difficulty.
Thanks guys for shedding some light on this matter. Unfortunately, I think now I'm pretty much in the same position, it all comes down to my preference now. As I've said in my country there're only around 40+ qualified actuaries. In addition, the employer are not very keen in showing study support. This translates into high proportion of actuarial staffs quitting each year before qualifying. This is what I have in mind, I think I'll most probably start working once I write CA1 and CA3. At least I get the exposure before I decide on what to specialize, plus I don't have to cram that 60 chapters CA1 while I'm working..
Ryan, sounds like a great idea. And the experience requirement is no longer valid. You need work-based skills. Don't know exactly how they work as I am still a full time university grad student. It involves having a learning log which you must complete under supervision of a supervisor(actuary) and has to do with your everyday job. You can only qualify when the Institute OR Faculty is happy with your learning log. This only applies to students entering the Institute or Faculty after July 2004. (That includes me.) Gareth, on the point of university courses. I am a full time student at a South African university. My university offers exemption form CT1-8, CA1, ST2,ST4. I am currently third year and doing CT4,5,6 as part of my bachelors degree. CT8 is an honours course and I have decided to study this part time through the Institute. I can assure you that the university equivalents are much more difficult that the Institute exams. There are a lot less bookwork and numerical questions that will give you nightmares. Furthermore you need a 60% pass mark (based solely on you exam paper) for an exemption. (In CT2 and 7 you need 65%), even though you only need 50% to pass the module. The fact that you are lectured makes the material more handable, and there usually are no lack of questions to work out. But no lecturer of mine has ever given any exam tips, or left out anything in the notes. We are just as blind as you are as to what might come up. Good luck for Wednesday. Erik
