Exam Strategies

[Viki2010]

Hello, I would like to find out how do you guys approach the actual exam given the limited time....Do you:

- solve questions in order as they are given
- start solving the questions with the highest number of marks first
- solve questions in the order of difficulty for you, leaving the hardest till the end
?

your feedback will be greatly appreciated.

 

[scarlets]

I always used to answer them in the order given. Then I had a few exams, thinking CT4 and CT5 in particular, where I struggled to finish and had only 25 minutes or something to answer a big question at the end, not enough time. Kept on having to write - "then I would calculate/correct this but I have not enough time to do so now."

So next time I sat CT5 I started from the back and answered the big 20-25 mark questions first. However in this particular exam in April the numbers didn't work out for this first question I did and I was angry and ratted for the rest of the exam as it was probably just a silly numerical slip-up. Think what I learnt from this was that the short little questions are sometimes nice to warm the brain up.

So now I just start from Q1 and work my way through. Oh, and prepare better for the exam because ultimately this is how you really save on time as you just write for 3 hours non stop keep the marks coming in no time to sit and think.

 

[mattt78]

i agree with scarlet - i often thought about taking the back to front approach for the same reasons, but I thought that if I did that and made a mess of the big question(s) it would really put me in a bad state of mind to tackle the remaining questions.

now I work through in order, but just force myself to move on if i'm using too much time on a question, and hope i'll have time to come back at the end. There's nothing more frustrating that realising at the end you've missed out on some fairly quick easy marks on the last question, and i'm sure its not coincidence that the last question usually does have quite a few quick easy marks!

 

[Viki2010]

it's great hearing how it looks from your experience....

I tend to fist solve the questions which I know I've mastered well, and leave the non-standard problems till the end....

do you see a problem with this approach?

I am considering doing what you are doing - in order given by the examiners...

 

[scarlets]

it's great hearing how it looks from your experience....

I tend to fist solve the questions which I know I've mastered well, and leave the non-standard problems till the end....

do you see a problem with this approach?

I am considering doing what you are doing - in order given by the examiners...

I do something like that too. If there's a question which takes more than a couple of minutes to think about, or if I'm unsure, I leave and come back to it at the end. Reason being I want to bag all the marks I know for sure on the paper then just scramble what I can on the ones I'm not sure of.

 

[mattt78]

i agree with that, for the CTs at least. But if you're skipping more than one or two questions then you know you're in trouble!

The good thing about the later exams is that you get reading time, so you can target at the non-bookwork, tricky questions while your brain is still fresh, then its easier to use your actual 3 hour exam time more efficiently.

 

[Viki2010]

i agree with that, for the CTs at least. But if you're skipping more than one or two questions then you know you're in trouble!

The good thing about the later exams is that you get reading time, so you can target at the non-bookwork, tricky questions while your brain is still fresh, then its easier to use your actual 3 hour exam time more efficiently.

thank you....
It's not really skipping what I'm doing but first doing the straightforward questions and later and in the end doing the more challenging questions.....

 

[sonnyshook]

With CT exams which I have now completed I divide every exam I sit into three parts about

one third easy
one third hard
one third easy

I figure that 2 thirds of the exam is doable and one third is hard. So I start with easy questions to warm up then I do hard ones (which often carry lots of marks) then I do easy for the last part of the exam. The strategy works because I am really fast in the last part of the exam so I can work through easy questions in less proportionate time. For example I can do 25 easy marks in 25 minutes. I can not say the same for 2 hard 13-mark questions.

 

[scarlets]

Time really goes by quick in an actuary exam, not a spare moment to daydream I find.

Usually first time I put my head up to look at the clock it says 12.10 or something.

CT5 in April was possibly the most draining 3 hours of my life. It didn't help that I had only managed 3 hours sleep the night before though.

 

[DevonMatthews]

With CT exams which I have now completed I divide every exam I sit into three parts about

one third easy
one third hard
one third easy

This right here is quite possibly the best piece of actuarial exam advice you are ever likely to receive. Working through the questions in chronological order is fundamentally flawed. Too often the examiners slip in short questions that really make you think. These questions a/ Chew up valuable time which you need for the high value questions and b/ crush your confidence. It makes no sense to attempt them when your concentration is at its peak. If your pen is not in contact with the page you are not earning marks. Before getting stuck into any question i always consider carefully the time I have remaining, how many marks are on offer and how long I estimate it will take me to extract those marks. This gives me an idea of what questions are good value and which ones are not.

 

[scarlets]

Devon, I concur. I've sat 5 exams in the last year and many of them had an awkward Q1 or Q2 which is not a nice start to the exam, only worth maybe 4 marks each or something.

I bet many fall into the trap of spending maybe up to 20 minutes just pursuing 8 marks like this and ending up getting 1 or 2 only.

I mean, the way I look at it now is if you're well prepared and an awkward question comes up then others will struggle too so best not to worry & just move on.

Easier said than done though... I hate not picking up full marks on Q1 & Q2, hurts the ego.... !!!!!!

 

[Approximately]

For the CTs I always worked through in numerical order but find that doesn't work as well for the later ones. I am also lucky in that I never really was time pressured in the CTs, so could take that luxury.

For the later exams I prefer to use the reading time to pick out the questions with the largest blocks of marks and do these first. This is because these are the questions where idea generation is the challenge, and reciting core reading isn't enough. If I hit them in the second half of the exam I tend not to come up with as many points, and therefore lose more marks than I wanted (this is based on marking my own practise papers).

The longer questions are usually broken up into small manageable chunks, which give helpful hints as to what is needed in other parts. I hit these after I've done the big questions, maybe with a crack at question 1 (usually the shortest) for a rest in the middle.

Shorter questions with fewer marks each usually have a couple of obvious marks which you can get even towards the end of the paper (and there's fewer marks to miss...)

This technique gives me a better result on practise papers at least...

 

[mattt78]

Devon, that made me laugh. i hope you don't really think you just revealed 'the best piece of actuarial exam advice you are ever likely to receive'! Your last couple of sentences were perfectly sensible, but i really don't think the rest of it would be good advice for most people. Approximately seems to have a much more balanced sensible approach. For example:

(i) You seem to suggest you should attempt the easiest questions when your concentration is at its peak, so presumably you suggest attempting the hardest at the end, (when its probably at it lowest). That may sometimes be the best strategy, but it clearly could also be a pretty bad strategy, especially if you're likely to have enough time to make at least a reasonable attempt at each question within the 3 hours (as is the case for most exams). E.g. Sonnyshock's experience is a good example of how someone has found a strategy that works for them by attempting the hardest questions in the middle of the exam!

(ii) "if your pen is not in contact with the page you are not earning marks". Whilst literally true, this seems to be contradicting what is generally accepted to be good exam technique. You seem to be advocating a strategy of trying to maximise the rate at which you score marks constantly during the exam, but this is not the best way to maximise your total marks scored at the end of the 3 hours, which should be your objective. In my experience, this is the easiest trap to fall in to, and i'd suspect this is a common reason for people failing exams. If you want to score maximum marks (i.e. your maximum), you'll probably need to put your pen down at least a few times during the exam (or at least make notes on scrap paper) and spend some time brainstorming/planning/structuring your answer. Its a 3 hour marathon, not 180 one minute sprints, so your strategy should reflect that.

(iii) this is probably stating the obvious, but the advantage of just working through the paper and tackling the questions in the order they appear in the paper is that it avoids wasting time (a) reading through the whole paper before you start in order to identify the easiest marks, and (b) jumping between different parts of different questions in order to tackle them in a strict 'easiest first' order (as devon seems to advocate), which is likely to involve re-reading questions etc. I'd guess some compromise between the two extremes is likely to work best for most people, as Vicki seemed to suggest.

 

[DevonMatthews]

I didn't say do the big questions at the end, what I did say is that you should not waste any time attempting questions you don't know how to do (If you find a question conceptually hard you probably don't have a good understanding of the topic so leaving these questions completely until there is nothing left to do intrinsically maximises your probability of passing since your unlikely to score highly anyway) .
What I did say is that I do strongly recommend the strategy outlined by Sonnysook. I think we have a differing definition of "hard". By hard questions I do not mean conceptually difficult questions that involve a lot of thinking, I mean questions that have a disproportionate number of marks compared with the work required (eg involve a lot of computation or maybe algebra and usually consist of a full page of writing that may take some time to decrypt). So adopting the strategy outlined by sonny,
1st hour: Answer the easiest bookwork (or easy numerical) style questions as quickly as possible in order to build confidence.
2nd hour: Answer the more involved questions which require you to digest a lot of information. By this time you should have overcome initial exam nerves, but are not drained completely such as to minimise the probability of missing the point of the question.
3rd hour: Revert to extracting easy marks, possibly get something down for the questions you have no idea on if time permits.

 

[sonnyshook]

Weighing on the easy-hard-easy debate here is what I can say. Whilst doing past exam papers some time ago I tried all the methods. Here were the results:

• the easy-to-hard route. Result: spending too much time on easy questions
• the hard-to-easy route. Result: destroys confidence..you may end messing up easy ones
• numerical order route. Result: the distant second best but no strategy here because you are working with cards that are dealt to you by the examiner.
• easy-hard-easy. Result: always comes out trumps simply the best, better than all the rest

 

[mattt78]

fair enough devon

I think Approx makes a good point - the later exams where you get reading time make it alot easier to take a more targeted approach without having to waste actual exam time looking through the paper.

I really like having the reading time. Because I know that my brain is the freshest in the first 30 mins, I try to spend the first 5 mins of the reading time having a quick skim through, and then the next 10-20 mins just brainstorming and planning my answers to what seem to be the hardest/biggest questions (i.e. those where a bit of planning is really needed) - maybe the hardest 30 marks worth. I find this is the best use of my brainpower, and it's a nice confidence boost to know you've got a bit of a plan already for the key questions.

Then I'll work through roughly in sequential order, but skipping anything that is particularly hard (i.e. where i'm just not sure what the answer is, or where there are a very disproportionately low number of marks for the time required), aiming to finish with maybe half an hour to spare to come back to revisit these low yield questions at the end.

I guess this is actually not far off what sonnyshook does. But its maybe more of a 5% planning, then 50% easy marks, then 25% big questions, then 20% difficult split for me. That way you are planning to do the lowest yield questions at the end, so if you do over-run, its these bits that are left undone.

 

[Lewin]

i found that jumping all over the paper looking for 'Easier" questions really messes up your concentration plus confidence.
I always do the exam in the order in which it is presented,if i find im spending too much time on a question,i leave it and come back later(hopefully!)

I do have a friend who attempted the 'easier" longer questions in CT3 first,came back to the shorter stuff at the beginning with less ,marks and more twists
and they got an FA.

 

[sonnyshook]

i found that jumping all over the paper looking for 'Easier" questions really messes up your concentration plus confidence.
.

Nobody said you are looking for the easy questions.

To the contrary when I have gone through the paper in the first 5 minutes in my exams I am actually looking for the HARD ones or the ones with the MOST marks. I am not much interested in the easy ones per se.

Because I know if I ace the hard ones then I have aced the paper.

 

[Lewin]

I think il speak for many when i say that if a student started the exam with the hard questions with a tonne of marks,then you found you couldnt navigate the question that it destroys your confidence.

Doing the shorter question at the beginning of the paper helps with the mindset and youl have full confidence tackling the bigger questions at the end of the exam.

I wonder what would have happened if i started my ct1 exam with a nasty 20 mark question on npv last year that i doubt anybody was confident on how to do it.

 

[sonnyshook]

I think il speak for many when i say that if a student started the exam with the hard questions with a tonne of marks,then you found you couldnt navigate the question that it destroys your confidence.
.

What you say is exactly what I said if you read my earlier post.

We don't really have to go through this again do we. Nobody said you should start with the hard ones but rather IDENTIFY the hard questions or the ones with the most marks and ensure that they are TACKLED. The order I suggested was effective was easy-hard-easy. Read it below (or above) and understand.

Different people work with different strategies but a strategy which leaves out the hard ones or the ones with the most marks to the end is flawed. Why? You end up spending too much time on easy questions with the rest of your exam becoming history. Here are the strategies again as I have tested them.

• the easy-to-hard route. Result: spending too much time on easy questions
• the hard-to-easy route. Result: destroys confidence..you may end messing up easy ones
• numerical order route. Result: the distant second best but no strategy here because you are working with cards that are dealt to you by the examiner.
• easy-hard-easy. Result: always comes out trumps simply the best, better than all the rest

 

[mattt78]

a strategy which leaves out the hard ones to the end is flawed.

Really? If i'm going to not attempt 10 marks on the paper i'd rather not attempt the hardest 10 marks than the easiest.