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Practical exam start time for non UK students

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DaddyCruel

Member
Just read the details of start time for practical exams like CMxB & CSxB ...
https://www.actuaries.org.uk/studying/exam-bookings/exam-dates

For East Coast US this translates to a 4:45am start followed by a long trip to exam center next day in New York - Nice work!
I suppose I should be thankful that I'm not sitting it on the West Coast or other awkward times in Asia!
 
Yeah I don't understand why they can't offer them at a reasonable time like they do with the normal paper based exams.
 
DaddyCruel said:
For East Coast US this translates to a 4:45am start followed by a long trip to exam center next day in New York - Nice work!
I suppose I should be thankful that I'm not sitting it on the West Coast or other awkward times in Asia!
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Actually Asia for the most part has relatively "normal" timing for this exam. It seems like it's the Americas who get the short end of this stick.

In Singapore, this would be at 5pm as it starts 10am UK time if I'm not mistaken. The greater concern for me is that there's a chance one of my NTU modules may schedule their (non-Actuarial) group presentation on Tuesday morning between CM2B and CM2A.
 
I wonder what the impact these early starts have on performance for those starting at 2am to 4am. It would be interesting to see how they do relatively in the written papers to online as a consequence. I guess it might be a little more difficult to perform to be your best in some of these online exams at that time! Maybe a consideration for mitigating circumstances if only a small group of students are affected.
 
KevinB said:
Yeah I don't understand why they can't offer them at a reasonable time like they do with the normal paper based exams.
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It's pretty obvious why they don't - it's an online exam and so to be fair to everyone, everyone sits the same exam at same time. Imagine if because you are state side, you sit the exam 7 hours later, and someone in UK has emailed you the exam the second they got it - you have 7 hours to prepare - and probably will pass - which is a huge advantage over everyone else. Now yes while this may apply in theory to the written paper - you normally can't take the exam paper out of the centre (for this reason), and so if your mate from UK rings you - he is telling you from memory - which is very different to having the physical copy in front of you.
 
Ace123 said:
It's pretty obvious why they don't - it's an online exam and so to be fair to everyone, everyone sits the same exam at same time. Imagine if because you are state side, you sit the exam 7 hours later, and someone in UK has emailed you the exam the second they got it - you have 7 hours to prepare - and probably will pass - which is a huge advantage over everyone else. Now yes while this may apply in theory to the written paper - you normally can't take the exam paper out of the centre (for this reason), and so if your mate from UK rings you - he is telling you from memory - which is very different to having the physical copy in front of you.
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Why not let those in the US or Canada start it 3 hours later (before UK exam is finished) and/or don't make the exam paper shareable. Plenty of solutions to this problem.
 
KevinB said:
Why not let those in the US or Canada start it 3 hours later (before UK exam is finished) and/or don't make the exam paper shareable. Plenty of solutions to this problem.
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It's still going to be in middle of night or very early in morning with the first option. Non shareable paper - what exactly is that? you could take a photo on your phone and send to a mate in seconds. The best way of avoiding people colluding/cheating on an exam like this is a) have it at the same time, b) have different exams - but the problem with that is it's not fair if one exam is deemed harder than another?
 
Will this all change with the new online platform that is coming into place in April 2020?

Which of the online exams will take place on the new platform and what are the details for the new platform if any of the tutors are aware?
 
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