Who has recently passed ST9?

[FloWesh]

Have you recently passed ST9? What was your study strategy?
Did you pass it at first attempt? What do you think aided that?
If you passed it at the 2nd, 3rd,...nth attempt, what do you think you were doing wrong in the beginning? What study strategy do you think helped you finally pass the exam?
I am planning sit ST9 in September... in search of the best study approach to take... I've just started reading through the textbooks.

 

[morrisja]

Passed first time in September 2013..

The TLDR:
- ActEd summaries more than the textbooks
- Tutorials (took block but recommend regular if it's an option)
- Mock exam
- Understand, don't learn off


ActEd-wise I took block tutorials and did a mock exam. I'd recommend regular tutorials if they're available. I found after the tutorials I felt like I had a much better grasp of where I should be focusing my efforts. And having done regular tutorials for SA2 in April 2014 I think they're probably more useful.

I didn't spend too much time on the textbooks to be honest. I referred to them whenever I wasn't clear on something, but I think the ActEd summary covers things very well. I gave the other items like the practice note and S&P paper a read but can't say I studied them in great detail.

Some reading of the textbooks is useful if you have time, but for a short sitting I didn't feel like it was worth it. The case studies are definitely worth a read though!! I have heard of people passing first time without so much as a glance at the textbooks, but that may depend on your background.

My focus was on the summary notes and understanding rather than learning them off. That's the advantage of little traditional core reading I suppose, the exam answer can't really be a copy paste of core reading! The exam seems to still vary quite a bit, it's not settled down into a typical structure.. there was 9 questions and a total of 27 different parts in the exam I sat but in April 2014 the exam had 4 questions one of which had 70+ marks!! So who knows how it'll appear in future..

I did get reasonably familiar with the maths, but the ideas behind the maths are more important and understanding how these ideas tie into risks. The paper I sat had very little maths (4 marks for a simple copula I think). You could easily get 20+ marks relating to calculation questions so it's worth preparing for this part quite well.