Which comes first? 1000 posts in this thread or CAS releasing Exam 7 results?
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we all sure hope exam results
7 weeks and counting…10 for the 11/19 crew
Maybe the CAS is eagerly awaiting us reaching 1,000 posts at which point they’ll release results
I trust there is a reason they arent out
Maybe each 100 point increment is a new exam release date email. 600 for 5, 700 for 6U, 800 for 7, 900 for 8 and 1000 to finish it up
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It’s only been 7 weeks? Wow, back when I took these puppies, it was typically 8-9 weeks.
9 weeks for me
I’m counting since I originally scheduled to take this damn thing in May so we’re approaching a year
I’d say itd be a victory to get results by Friday at this point
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I actually kinda slacked off on my studying when they delayed it to June originally. I didn’t really find my groove until early October so no complaints here 
post 600! I studied hard for the June and October exam and got frustrated when they moved it to December.
For sure, I think it was the pandemic just starting and the lot of uncertainty as things blew up that I just couldn’t focus. Also doesn’t help that 6 has some pretty dry material
That’s fair. And that is a really long time.
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I’m being silly. It sucked but even with Exam 7 pushed back I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate through COVID, it definitely was a unique year.
For the record, I support IQs. I personally think they warrant more time and that affording candidates more time would not diminish the value of credentials. Perhaps that’s a better way of stating my viewpoint.
IQ questions cause problems with time management and very hard to internalize.
In the beginning the IQ questions were just sub-part questions that were essentially different questions. The newer questions are more confusing with lots of data and sometimes worded in an open ended fashion.
I actually did pretty well on the exam 9 2019 IQ question got 75%-99%. But during the exam I had no idea if I did well on it or not.
My preference would be if the IQ questions were a little more straightforward instead of continuing the trend to make it more bloomsy. They already have a lot of data and are hard to internalize without making them tricky.
Sharing this as perspective for anyone who might have had technical difficulties during the exam:
I just read a post on LinkedIn about a guy who said he was unable to type anything for the last 20-30 mins of 6C. He ended up passing with a 6. I’m not sure if he filed a grievance complaint. I guess either way, his result implies that there was some adjustment that contemplated the situation. Either that or he did phenomenally well on the rest of the test.
Exactly. More than difficulty, the biggest failure of the CAS exams is their ludicrous standard of acceptable length. This exam is supposed to be about who is qualified to opine on the reserves of an insurance company and who isn’t. But the test is geared to having you read a question and spit back an answer via a memorized algorithm as fast as possible, transforming the standard from “qualified Actuary” to “qualifies standardized test taker”.
Compare someone who has all the algorithms memorized and doesn’t need to spend any time thinking is able answers the question correctly in 3 minute, with someone else doesn’t but spends time to rederive the proper method in 10 minutes, and arrives at the same result. Who is the more qualified actuary? I’ll note that in the real world, when faced with a new problem it’s extremely rare to immediately know the best way to arrive at the answer, and will usually involve numerous attempts and false paths. But in the exam environment the person with the second approach never has enough time to finish and doesn’t even get to attempt a significant portion of the exam.
The time constraints are a convenient but ultimately arbitrary way of separating candidates. Any exam sitting where >1% of candidates do not have time to answer every question fully is flawed. If candidates know something, let them demonstrate it. If you don’t know something, you can sit there for 5 hours and get no further.
Given current exams length baseline, it should probably be reduced 50% from what the comittee currently believes to be an acceptable length with the 4-hour window we have.
i.e. If I magically became exam chairman tomorrow, I’d ask for the current people responsible to submit the exam to pare it down to as short a length as they possible can, and when they were done, I’d remove half of it.
N.B. If your reflex to that proposal is “We can’t do that, pass rates would go through the roof” you are proving my point that exams are not acting as a proper measure of a “qualified Actuary”, and are part of the problem.
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I think the CAS wants people to finish the exams. The issue really is they are bad at judging exam length. They believe that the exam length for all these exams are 3 hours with an hour given for review.
The reason why they don’t give longer than 4 hour exams is due to testing centers primarily.
I do know people that got special permission for variety of reasons who got extra time in the past. The reasons extended from a doctors note, to a physical therapists note about carpal tunnel. From what I hear it was actually pretty easy to get the extension.