Let’s get rollin! 
How is everyone feeling about the exam? Anyone started studying yet?
Thanks for starting the thread! I don’t feel too bad, cos some of the source materials I already covered with previous exams were transfered to the new exam 9 syllabus. Starting to study soon though.
2 Likes
I’m in! Haven’t started studying yet but planning on it soon.
Do any of the exam companies (or exam takers) make Excel versions of past questions publicly available? I don’t have any of the questions from the material brought over from 7 and 8 in Excel, and I’m realizing how tedious even just dragging screenshots of the PDFs into Excel is.
If not, who already has them available in their materials? It may be worth signing up for someone again just for that.
I think both TIA and Rising Fellow have the prior exam problems in excel form from my experience on other exams and what I’m currently seeing with RF. But feel free to double check or you could message them. I’m sure they could clarify what comes in their material.
Anybody have a preference/recommendation on best study material for Exam 9? (I know they changed it a lot for this sitting.) Just curious what everyone is doing. I signed up for RF currently.
Thanks, I bit the bullet and bought Rising Fellow. Very happy with the Excel problems so far.
The cas now has exam 9 questions that are going to follow the new question formats on the pearson vue website
https://home.pearsonvue.com/cas
I was looking at that today. Thanks for pointing it out!
On the Exam 9 example question with the sliding scale commission on there, I notice there is this dual split in the screen where the question is on the left and the spreadsheet workbook is on the right, but the spreadsheet workbook is SUPER shrunk. Is there a way to make it bigger that I’m missing?
I hope this won’t be a problem on the actual exam…
I do notice that using F11 to make the it full screen makes it larger, but still smaller than it’s been in the past.
It looks like they may have forgotten to put their question on one of the items. I’m guessing they’re trying to ask for the expected technical ratio or expected commission. (Regarding the portion that provides a spreadsheet to calculate things in for the yellow answer box.)
Regarding further questions on the same topic, if you find yourself looking at that question in their Pearson Vue CAS 2024 sample section, I also see them referring to expected technical “ration”. Is that a thing? I’m assuming it’s a typo for ratio even though ration get used a lot in their answer options, their question might be flawed due to the following…
-
They mention lowering the max commission. But then also change the sliding scale without expanding on where the scale now ends (50-70% still would imply a higher minimum commission at 20% instead of the original 15% since it starts at new max 30% and decreases 0.5:1 to the presumed original 70% LR associated with the minimum; unless I’m supposed to adjust the max LR out to end at a 15% commission). (I just ignored the impact to the range and simply assumed sliding at their 0.5:1 ratio within the 50-70% range since breaking out the 50-80% range doesn’t seem feasible with the data provided.)
-
I would assume the two answers they are looking for are: 1. The Expected Ceded Loss Ratio Remains Unchanged (Even though they have “ration” instead of “ratio”.), 2. The Expected Technical “Ratio” Decreases. (But they don’t have decreases and they have two similar answers on the technical ratio being unchanged but use “Ratio” in one and “Ration” in the other.)
Looks like there is also an Exam 9 Question on the sample missing a link to the exhibit that I see and not updating the treaty references but instead Treaty 1 several times.
I noticed all of these same things! Shockingly sloppy and frankly kind of scary. The “ration” typo isn’t a big deal because we can pretty easily infer what is meant… but the lack of proofreading (or at least the lack of consistency in terminology) makes me nervous. I really hope the actual exams are better than this. Seems like good intentions to improve the exam process but really poor execution. Also, the drag and drop question with “LHS” all the way down… isn’t that really just a Multiple Selection question? Why wouldn’t they use the Multiple Selection format with checkboxes instead of confusing people with the clunky drag/drop interface and a cryptic “LHS?” I assume this just means “left hand side” but I don’t want to think about something this irrelevant and worry that I missed something on the syllabus while the clock is ticking.
I will say that you should be able to click and drag the dividing bar to the left on the split pane question to expand the spreadsheet view. Pretty concerned about everything else though.
Thank you so much for saying all of that. I’m glad we’re on the same page regarding it. I hope the actual sitting will be better. We pour so much time into these exams especially when we’re at the final stages of the last one or two exams and just want to be FINALLY done with it.
1 Like
I realized for getting the spreadsheet to be bigger if you hold CTRL and use the mouse wheel to zoom out or just use your browser settings to zoom out that it will make the spreadsheet bigger to use.
1 Like
How are people preparing for Mildenhall? I have TIA but the number of practice problems for that section is pretty light and don’t know if it’s worth it to purchase the problem pack from RF.
Trying to prepare for Mildenhall is causing me much anguish when thinking about getting a 5 last sitting. I’d rather have gotten a 3 or 4 than have been probably one question away, on a subject they completely dropped from the syllabus no doubt.
It will be sheer luck if anyone can correctly predict what parts will be actually tested this sitting and in how much detail.
Now back to re-reading an ERM book I totally scrubbed from memory after passing exam 7 years ago, thanks CAS.
Agree with others that Mildenhall is TOUGH to prepare for! RF has a decent amount of practice problems. Just hoping that CAS exam writers are on the same wavelength. The problems that RF presents are pretty straightforward. Hoping for the same on the exam, but that’s not really how fellowship exams have been going lately.
Does anyone have more insight on the historical coverage of the papers that have been on Exam 9 for a while and didn’t get cut with the new syllabus? Seems like the papers that remained were more like “back burner” papers on past exams (with the exception of Coval and Panning). This is what I see for count of questions on Exam 9 from 2013 to 2019:
| Cummins Capital | Cummins CAT | Panning | Coval | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| 14 | 1 | 1 | ||
| 15 | 1 | 1 | ||
| 16 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 17 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 18 | 1 | 1 | ||
| 19 | 1 | 1 |
If this is indeed the case, I feel like we should expect pretty heavy testing of Mildenhall, even on Section C.
Seems like not a lot of people on here or Reddit for Exam 9 this year, but I’m curious to hear how people felt about the exam, for anyone out there reading this thread!
Took it today and I think I feel good about it. I’m not sure if it was an easy exam or if I just over-prepared for this sitting because I don’t want to take an exam ever again haha
How was the actual new format exam questions in terms of usability compared to the sample Pearson questions?
Are there excel problems that you can only see 10 rows and 33% of the sheet at one time?
Not great 
Hopefully they think a bit more about that for future sittings. I think the worst of it was spreadsheets constrained to like 50% of screen. It added to the tedium of working with an already sub-optimal spreadsheet software. I don’t know why they changed the spreadsheet problem formats. I understand changing it for purely written response questions, but for spreadsheet, it just takes up more of the screen and makes it harder. I don’t see what the issue was with having the problem presented in the spreadsheet itself.
Took it yesterday. I definitely wasn’t over prepared, but felt like I had a shot going into the exam room. Walked out feeling very unsure and hoping for some miracle.