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Minimum marks for passing

A

Arunkumar

Member
Can anyone tell me the minimum marks required passing a CT exam?

I'm not aiming for the minimum though. :D

Thanks
 
It is about 60% for the CT stage - this will be weighted for each exam though
 
What?! You don't know the meaning of weighted?? Dude, what the heck are you doing here?!!


hehe just kidding, I'd say the pass mark is an Orhlenstein-Uhlenbeck (spelling) process- stochastic and mean-reverting, around a deterministic trend
 
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Not published.

The general feeling I get is the F&I feels that pass mark does not matter, what matters is the standard.

For example, getting 50% in a difficult exam may be better than getting 60% for an easy exam. It is better to aim to be in the top 25%-50% to allow for a good chance to pass, than to aim for a specific mark.
 
My best advice is give each question a good shot. Don't get pre-occupied thinking about what marks in total you may or may not be amassing. You have no knowledge of the competition.

Instead, take each question as far as you can. If you are feeling you are spending too long leave a good audit of where you are going (assuming its a maths qn) then move on. They do say that the amount of time you spend eeking out the last 10% of marks on every qn in the same time you could already sweep up more on a brand new question.

Missing out a question can be enough to make you fail as the borderline criteria looks for knowledge across the syllabus.

Best of luck
 
bystander said:
the borderline criteria looks for knowledge across the syllabus.
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although this looks reasonable and i too believe this is true, but u can never tell how they decide. how do u know this? r u guessing?
 
phantom said:
although this looks reasonable and i too believe this is true, but u can never tell how they decide. how do u know this? r u guessing?
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In some exam report or examiner tips I remember a discussion on exam tactics. One tactic was to read a few topics, master them well and try to get all marks on these questions. Naturally u shouldn't touch questions u didn't study giving u time to do the ones u know.

It was categorically stated that most students who attempt that strategy fail. Firstly they don't know the paper beforehand so it's a very risky strategy. Secondly because if they do fall in the borderline region they will not convince the reviewer of being fit to assume professional duty.

I recently saw it in the exam tips offered by the Actuarial Society of South Africa http://www.actuarialsociety.org.za/Exam-Tips-497.aspx.

"MANAGE YOUR TIME. If there are 10 marks, it means you have 18 minutes to spend on the
question. While theoretically, you could pass by doing very well on most questions and not
doing all, it is the examiners’ experience that this approach does not work and almost all
students following this approach fail."

I love their last tip.

"Study to get 100%. If you are studying to get 60%, you might as well give up now."
 
Came from someone close to exams at the Institute. I guess it is very different missing out a 2 marker to a 15+ mark qn.

But I agree basic advice be prepared for anything! Its the unusual that will often differentiate so don't forget your basics and remember most will struggle on these qns.
 
You often hear that 60% will typically secure a pass, but I'm sure the typical pass mark is more like 50%.

The pass marks are something the institute seem to keep to themselves, but having taken 9 CT exams to date (and passed 6) with 8 of them probably being borderline, my guess is that the pass mark typically lies in the 45%-55% area, maybe a bit lower for CT3 where everyone seems to pass.

I also think its best to cover everything and spread yourself thinly than concentrate just on a few favoured topics. Even if i'm de-prioritising a chapter or two, I try to at least have a superficial understanding of it, so I can pick up the straightfwd book-work type marks for regurgitating lists etc from the core reading.
As the comment below suggests - you're really competing against your peers rather than trying to acheive a given pass mark, so avoiding dropping easy marks is top priority, (because everyone else will get those), whereas struggling on the difficult ones isn't such a problem (as most people will struggle with those), as long as you pick up some difficult marks through the paper of course.
 
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"Study to get 100%. If you are studying to get 60%, you might as well give up now."[/QUOTE]

This is so true... It's very depressing to have studied to get 80% (which is quite a lot of work) and then fail. It's a cruel fact and one should approach exams with this mindset, otherwise you'll be a very depressed person. It happens to me all the time and it's such a waste of time.

Now what does studying to get 100% entail?
Is it - knowing your core-reading really well (i.e being able to reproduce it), doing every single past exam question from the revision booklets and doing the last 4 exam papers under exam conditions?
 
SpringbokSupporter said:

Now what does studying to get 100% entail?
Is it - knowing your core-reading really well (i.e being able to reproduce it), doing every single past exam question from the revision booklets and doing the last 4 exam papers under exam conditions?
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I guess it should mean, aiming to become an actuary than to aim to pass the exams of the institute - to think like an actuary before the institute accepts you as one.
 
I think it comes down ultimately to how much you want it - no such thing as studying to get 60%, 80%, 93% etc. If you want to pass, just be prepared to study hard and consistently! Each will have their own idea on what to study or look at first...
 
studying to get 100%

Two things I disagree with - 'you should study to get 100%' and 'you have to do lots of past papers'.

Unless you're very clever, I really don't think it makes sense to 'study to get 100%'. You have a limited amount of time to study, so you have to allocate it to maximise your probability of passing. If there's a few very tricky parts to the course, and you're really struggling with them, then the chances are that almost everyone else is too, and the worst case scenario is that you drop 5 or 6 marks if you give up on them, which almost everyone else will drop too. So your time may be better spent making sure you get the marks most other people will get. Its great if you can study to get 100%, but I've got through all the CTs studying to get about 90-95%, and it works for me.

Past papers are definitely useful, but I rarely get around to looking at more than one or two, and concentrate on the Q&A banks, and Acted questions from tutorials, which are mostly hand picked from past papers! So I'm not really disagreeing, but I think if you go to tutorials, and do the Q&A banks this is enough.
 
mattt78 said:
Two things I disagree with - 'you should study to get 100%' and 'you have to do lots of past papers'.

Unless you're very clever, I really don't think it makes sense to 'study to get 100%'. You have a limited amount of time to study, so you have to allocate it to maximise your probability of passing. If there's a few very tricky parts to the course, and you're really struggling with them, then the chances are that almost everyone else is too, and the worst case scenario is that you drop 5 or 6 marks if you give up on them, which almost everyone else will drop too. So your time may be better spent making sure you get the marks most other people will get. Its great if you can study to get 100%, but I've got through all the CTs studying to get about 90-95%, and it works for me.

Past papers are definitely useful, but I rarely get around to looking at more than one or two, and concentrate on the Q&A banks, and Acted questions from tutorials, which are mostly hand picked from past papers! So I'm not really disagreeing, but I think if you go to tutorials, and do the Q&A banks this is enough.
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agreed... warning to others though: CT8 q+a is way easier than the exam.
 
I would rather work through past papers than the Q&As, especially for the CT series. No matter how much time is left, make time.
 
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