Exemption City

cmon jm_kinuthia...Given you have become all defensive and bothered to mention that the fact that your university exams were indeed path breaking I am sure that ..............am really tempted to say something here but will exercise restraint!!
u know what!go through the entire thread..U will know the gory details and get some idea on perceptions about university courses offering exemptions..

 

Lots of perceptions available but as someone who's done both I don't consider uni exams the easy option. At the end of the day this is the direction the profession is going in, just like law, medicine, etc.

University exams don't measure the same skill sets (and nor should they) so common exams is a non-starter.

 

Calum..I am sure you wouldnt trade your university exemptions for acquiring a certain set of very unique skill sets...If that is the case,then I rest my case
Cheers

 

I certainly wouldn't mind having done the professional exams in the subjects I have exemptions for. But since I probably wouldn't be here pontificating without having done the degree, there's a chicken and egg element involved.

Also, with good lecturers one can get a level of insight that is often unavailable in the professional syllabus.

 

I got 6 exemptions from Uni and 2 more directly via IFOA and studied more and harder and understood better when i did it via IFOA.

At Uni you get class tests and tests and the exam shouldn't deviate by far. It's more double via exemptions.

Sometimes you can check out with 12 exemptions from varsity in 4 years and the IFOA thinks it's fair.

 

The flipside is that at Uni, you're studying this material full time. If you did the equivalent professional exams in the same time frame as an academic year and studied full time, you should blow them out the water.

 

At Uni you have many other subjects in a 6 months semester and the time you can spend on one is limited. Whilst working most people sit for one exam and have about 6 hours every weekday free and 32 hours during weekends.

That's me for example, i can focus on CA1 every day until September, my friends can only put in a fraction of that time now at Uni. But the pass rates are higher at Uni?

 

bobbathejobba..thanks for sharing this information...I really dont know why this still hasnt been nipped in the bud...If you cant have a uniform set of examinations why not have two classes of Fellowship?One for people who have given the public examinations and the other for all exemption candidates..sorry state of affairs

 

Ah the eternal debate.

Yes, exemptions and regular exams have different circumstances so some people may find one easier than the other.

But I think they achieve the same thing, ie candidates who get one or the other have a reasonable grasp of the material in the syllabus.

For what it's worth,
When I got my exemptions, the exemption criteria was based soley on the final exam (ie not coursework) and was marked by an external examiner. Incidentally, this was one of the same guys who marks the regular exams and thus sets pass marks from one sitting to another to maintain consistency. I think it's fair to say they put in a bit of effort to try to maintain standard of those who get exemptions and from one exam sitting to the next. Of course nothing is perfect.

By far the hardest thing of doing the regular exams was the time factor, ie it was a breeze to do studying full time (or rather less than a full time job) at uni, compared with studying in your spare time (in addition to a full time job).
(This may not apply to the 1 day a week course such as the one at imperial)

I thought the uni exams were reasonably close the the Institute (I used the latter as practice)

If you want to have two qualifications, with/without exemptions
What about those who have some exemptions, compared with one who has a different set?
What about those who have 1 compared with 10?
What about those who passed an exam before a syllabus change?
Someone who passed during the 100 series etc?
Someone who happened to pass each exam when the pass rate was the lowest compared with someone who happened to pass at the times when pass rates were at the highest?
Those who do ST1 and 2 compared with ST5 and 6?
(yes I am being ridiculous, but you'd be very hard pressed to find two people who qualified under the exact same circumstances)


Having more than one path to qualifcation is not necessarily a bad thing.
I think a reasonable attempt to maintain standards is being done.
Obviously the system is not perfect.
If you really think one option is much easier than another you are free to "exploit" the system by taking the easier route.

 

Examination arbitrage, eh?

The question is will prices change?

 

I wish it was true, but at least for me, it certainly wasn't. There was one period when I wasn't working - I studied full time for a few IFoA exams at the same time - failed them all. Maybe it's just me...

 

I agree.

 

As far as I know, you can't get an exemption for the SA exams, so even if the university route is easier, you're just delaying/prolonging the ultimate pain.
I feel some times that candidates with exemptions have a bigger adjustment to make when they start sitting IFoA exams. It's better to start in the "shallow end of the pool" with some CTs first

 

Two points to make.

One is that the university courses and Institute exams do not have to examine the same identical competences in order to create sufficiently qualified professionals. Being an actuary is rather more than being able to recite and calculate from a fixed list of formulae.

Secondly, the point of a time limit is to require candidates to demonstrate knowledge and understanding, not their ability to derive techniques or results from scratch.

 

Uni exams needs to be standardised

My main concern with the university courses is that they are not like for like with the institute (or even across universities). I know the institute reviews the exams but they are all of a different format and I fail to see how this is fair.

For example, a colleague of mine went to university and left with 8 exemptions. She said for CT2 there were no multiple choice questions but they would get a choice over the long questions (eg to produce accounts or to do a ratios question). Let be honest- we would all do the accounts question and I reckon most of us would be fairly confident of getting the full 20 marks for such a question. They were also told their mark and the mark of the exam.

I also fail to see how they are even when the pass rates are so different. The pass rate at the Imperial College is 94% (from what I gather this is for all exams). Yet for the institute exams its barely even 60% for individual exams. (Source http://www.insidecareers.co.uk/courses/msc-actuarial-finance/)

 

Also...

Further to my previous note, I also worry that having an influx of students into the profession could be detrimental to the profession. The exams are designed to some extent to wean people out to ensure a certain standard is met (hence why the actuarial profession is so highly regarded). If 94% of people are able to pass exams, then surely the standards are going to fall.

 

The point is not to be fair. It's not "fair" that I took a different CT8 exam to the one everyone else sat last year. The point is that it is sufficient to demonstrate basic technical competence.

That's how universities work. Again you're being asked to demonstrate sufficient technical competence, nothing more.

There is a big difference between someone whose full time job is studying, surrounded by a group of learners who can give mutual support, with an array of teaching backup, and someone who studies part time and gets railroaded through their exams by employers.

Lastly, being able to pass exams, university or professional, is not the only facet of being a succesful actuary.

 

Some people here keep on arguing in favor of university courses...We can end this debate so easily.If the university courses are indeed path breaking why dont the university students give the same exams as the other candidates?Am sure their path breaking education would surely result in a pass!!Why do they give exams that are set by the same guy who teaches them in class!!
COme on Uni Actuaries...give the same set of exams as we normal mortals and then this debate will end forever...what say?

 

I can't speak for all courses, but in my university degree the course is split out very differently to the actuarial exams. For example, we didn't do "CT7", we did separate modules covering economics, finance, etc, and in sitting these subjects we covered the CT7 syllabus. So it would be quite difficult to sit the actuarial exams as they would come at strange times in a course. You might say they could redesign the course, depends how much work would be involved in that I guess.

I think the main things to be aware of is that these courses are accredited. In other words, the profession goes to these courses and inspects their curriculums, exam standards, etc, and decides that they meet the requirements of the actuarial exams. So it doesn't really matter how you pass the exams, you should know the same "stuff" at the end of it.

 

The debates on this forum are well intended. However the only legal way of challanging the institutes practice of endorsing exemptions is by reference to the section 8.20-8.41 of the Revised code of practice 2008, In particular, section 8.36- the "Special Statutory Test".
Furthermore, the person who challanges them has to be disabled.

 

When do people expect the academic exemptions for the CTs to be given out this Summer? I've been old possibly early to mid-July?

Anxious to find out so I can decide which CT I need to tackle while working