Starting preparations for CA3

It is around 165 days to my 4th and hopefully final attempt at passing CA3. I am starting my preparations today. As I go along, I'll update lessons learnt and what went wrong previously. Please feel free to add any tips or suggestions or experiences you found particularly helpful in passing CA3. Thanks in advance.

 

Do you know what want wrong ie have you had counselling on any of them? If not I'd say try it to get some concrete guidance. Only tip I have is get someone else to look at your efforts, critique your office work and things you read against ca3 and practise , practise practise. Definitely a timed full conditions mock too if you can afford it and it's available.

 

I passed on my third attempt. I think the key factor for me was that I actually understood the information that had been provided for the presentation which allowed me to then extract the relevant information to produce and present the slides. On all the other attempts I thought my written communication was fine.

So my main advice would be to understand what you have been given. Easier said than done, I know. I should also add that on my third attempt the presentation part was on a topic I was familiar with which was not the case on my first two attempts. So I think it is a bit of pot luck depending on the type of paper you get.

 

I agree with LastHurdles that CA3 is mostly pot luck. It all depends on how you understand and interpret the question. If you get that bit wrong ironically no matter how good your Communication skills are you will probably fail.

I passed second time round. I spent the vast majority of my time going through each and every available past paper and reading and interpreting the question. I grouped papers into categories and got a reasonable sense of the different types of questions asked and the typical responses required. This helped me in the actual exam as I was quickly able to identify what the examiners were looking for in the final answer.

However the fact that I mostly avoided spending time improving my communication skills and focused on understanding and interpreting questions, suggests CA3 is not fit for purpose to me.

 

I 100% agree! I've just failed this exam and I think that's a joke. If I look at how the marks are allocated then, in my opinion, there's just no way I could have failed. The mark allocation that we're told about in the CA3 guide rewards a LOT outside of the actual accuracy of the content of your answer. Or so it seems, unless I haven't understood the Institute's underlying intentions . I mean, I don't think they make it very clear that marks for something like "points which are logically grouped into sections and follow a logical order" are dependent on correct, accurate content.

And if this IS the case - i.e. if this content accuracy really IS what is primarily required before the examiners can award the bulk of the marks for the contents sections, then you'd have to feel like this exam isn't primarily about communications. And let me give an example. I struggled in the last exam to understand what was required for the slides. Specifically, I couldn't figure out how to formulate the simple rules they required for determining annuity prices. I've never worked in pensions and besides that, who the heck ever requires "simple rules" like this? I just don't believe this is a thing you see in practice all that much. It's asking you step outside the comfort zone of your work experience and then further consider stuff outside of the normal sphere of things that actuaries would do there!?! Wow.

The result was that I ended up rushing my last slides, making mistakes as I linked my charts to Excel, and had to fit in an explanation in my oral as to why my slides weren't correct - not professional. At work, there would be ample opportunity in general to revise things, to get your work reviewed and to validate your results. You'd then be able to really focus on how to communicate everything!

I'm really very disappointed! I'm often told I communicate issues really well at work and, indeed, I really do take pride in how I communicate and make a concerted effort to appreciate who my audience is. In any case, it's not as if the institute doesn't drum that into our brains from CA1 and onward, so I think it's hardly surprising that most of us are probably very aware of this. CA3 is one big, huge, extraordinary FAIL!

 

I sympathise with all of you. I understand the bitterness one feels after failing this thing. I sat CA3 many years ago and failed it. I'll make a fresh resit attempt in November. Years ago, I seem to remember there were quite a few calculations that needed to be performed before any "communication skill" could start. Those calcs were eating into the time available. I found that really unfair. I see that the pass rates are still low for this exam.

 

A good lesson for us here. You don't have to like or agree with the way the subject is examined, but put your feelings to one side and work out what they want you to do.

 

Thanks. That's what I was going to do as well so I'm glad you've found it a helpful thing to do.

 

Truly glad to say I passed CA3 in the Aug sitting. This was my fourth attempt and the most excruciating. But what I learnt from the experience is that there is a method to the madness. Despite failing it 3 times, I would definitely say that this is one of the most useful actuarial exams I've taken and it has truly opened my eyes to the power of clear communication or to realise immediately when my communication is not clear. This forum has been absolutely helpful in motivating and helping me understand some of the most tricky questions in the past papers. Thanks to everyone. I'll add more on what approach worked for me in tackling this exam over the next couple of days.

 

Congrats Earth, glad to hear you've got this out of the way forever now.

 

The August sitting was my 1st attempt at CA3 and I managed to pass it.
With everyone's comments, I was really worried with this exam.
But the strange thing is I passed it with 65 marks when the pass mark was 65 and a number of other people who passed it have also got 65. To be honest, I thought I would have scored a bit higher than the pass mark itself - and I really doubt that my 65 and someone else's 65 when compared side by side would receive 65 - one answer would be better than the other's. I feel that they whoever passes this exam is not going to get a high mark at all and they will cap it so that most people are within a couple of passing for the purposes of ensuring this exam looks extremely difficult in the face of the public eye ever since pass marks are being released. That's just my thoughts based on the knowledge of people who passed CA3 this time round.

 

Congrats. Interesting. Another 65. There's another thread that's discussing this. Did you get technical issues during your presentation upload?

 

• Those who do CA3 at the accredited University courses need not worry about that, as they get to pick the topic and practice it weeks in advance.
• Those who have qualified abroad and using the IFoA's mutual recognition deal don't have to worry about a topic at all as they're not required to do this exam to obtain Fellowship.
• Therefore there exists three tiers of people when it comes to this exam.
• A demonstration of competency is demanded from some that is not demanded from others for conferring Fellowship

How can it be said that the competencies being tested by this exam are essential to working as an actuary when some people don't need to demonstrate them?