Me! I bought the notes last year while I was still at university and have since secured a graduate actuarial position. I don't start till June so I'm casually reading through CT1 and trying out the questions. I'm only on chapter 3 and I can tell it's gonna be tough. I come from an engineering background so thinking in a financial capacity is new to me.
Finally someone replied, I was starting to worry Oh yes, I found chapter 3 tricky at first, but after you understand it it seems really simple. Also a lot of the concepts repeat itself in further chapters. Yeah thinking in a financial capacity is totally new to me too. What uni did you graduate from?
I graduated from the University of Liverpool, how about yourself? What subject did you study? I'm gonna study chapter 3 again rather than just try and rememer it! It's good to known someone else is going through it too
I'm currently in chapter 14 and doing assignments simultaneously. Planning to finish the course notes by 22nd of Feb and start with the past UK papers, dwell on it for a month before starting with the Indian papers.
I'm on chapter 12 but I'm just trying this out in my gap year. However I will be going to KCL next September to study Music (I know, an interesting option). But at the moment I'm not even sure if I can apply to the exam as a non-member because I haven't got an ARN. Have you all joined the institute? Anyone applying as a non-member..
I'm fairly sure you can under the new scheme: http://www.actuaries.org.uk/students/exam_subjects/certificate_financial_mathematics#Apply As it'll be just a quick formality as part of your application for exam entry rather than the full membership usually required. Contact the examinations team using the email on that link for more info.
For me the scales rather fell from my eyes recently when a lecturer pointed out that a lot of the terminology and approach in this material derives from pre-calculator days - in other words, it's all geared to be done with arithmetic and books of tables, hence stuff like the nominal rate of interest and discount rates, which appear to be utterly pointless to anyone with a working knowledge of Excel. With common sense and a few formulas it's surprising how far you can get just by understanding the central concept of the constant value of a cashflow at all points in time.
