Well duh, it’d be in the best interest of someone playing the lottery if every ticket they bought was a winner. Doesn’t mean it should or will happen.
But people are implying that the test is calibrated for difficulty which its not
:squintyeyes:
No matter the difficulty of the exams, people will always complain when they fail. Especially since these exams are so high stakes. I definitely agree with everyone the length is an issue, but just continually complaining about how bad they are when plenty of people are able to get through them without issue is not a good look. I think if people spent a bit less time complaining about the CAS and a bit more figuring out more effective study/preparation strategies, they’d have a lot more success.
How will I know if an exam that is not mine is getting results tomorrow?
It’ll be on reddit.
I understand where you’re coming from and I applaud your success and commitment. What you need to understand is that there’s an element of luck involved here and also that, alot of qualified candidates fail exams for different reasons. I for instance had the great pleasure of sitting for 6,7 and 9 the first time precisely during the sitting that had the lowest historical pass rates (documented in CAS history) and failed them all. I was so discouraged that I didn’t take another exam for 5 years and I finally found the courage to resume a few years ago. That’s just my story. Everyone has a different journey that supports their criticism. I’m fine with people offering constructive criticism especially since I didn’t walk in their shoes.
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6 > 5 + 5 + 5.
Why anyone would attempt 3 exams in one sitting is beyond me. I think most people shouldn’t even do two at once unless you have an extremely good exam track record. I do agree that it must suck to have sat in the 2011 sitting when the pass rates were abysmal but they have been consistently much higher now that good study materials exist for the exams.
Dude, come on. It’s also not a good look to rag on people for complaining when you’ve never failed yourself.
We’ve covered a lot the reasons on here why the CAS deserves criticism for the quality of the exams: length (which you’ve acknowledged), questions with errors, ambiguous questions, etc. To someone who blows the exams away, that’s fine, but to those on the fringe, that shit matters and may add years to their travel time even though they were prepared enough to pass but for the CAS’s ineptitude.
Nobody I know that failed MFE complained about it. You know why? Because in that case, the SOA had their shit together.
Also, complaining and figuring out effective study strategies are not mutually exclusive events.
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I did those three exams in separate sittings.
Blank grade report is no longer there. (Strong first post… I know)
Acknowledgement letter still is there.
So did you like 7 better than 9? As much as I dislike 7, I dislike 9 more.
I think the material on both is great. Sometimes the CAS gets it right like in 2017 for 7. No complaints about the material on either.
There’s always a recency bias, but I’m fairly sure even correcting for that, I hate 7 more than any other exam by a lot.
I wish they would strip the ERM out of 7 and just leave it to the people who want to pursue CERA or perhaps have a module on ERM. The problem with 7 is it tries to take a massive amount of ERM info and test a very small amount of it. I like the ERM piece but the time investment is always disproportionate to the level they test it at. Both alternatives I suggested would test the ERM piece more comprehensively.
I liked studying for 9 waaaaayyyy more, especially on the first pass. I found the models for 7 really abstract and difficult to imagine for day-to-day use, though I don’t work in reserving; I do perform some light capital modeling. That said, it seems to me like 7 is the easier exam actually.
Reserving actuaries will have to tell me how applicable 7 is to their jobs, but I thought the 9 syllabus absolutely whiffs on connecting the concepts from different papers. The whole point of studying BKM it seems (other than learning CAPM) was to imagine translating that theory (capital-based) to insurers deciding what mix of business to hold (premium-based), but there’s no papers that try to make that connection. I even think there was a test question on this (2019 IQ?) but I even remember thinking as I read it, “this isn’t really as clearly applicable to the syllabus theory as you’re trying to make it”.
Also, I think the Robbin papers are too abstract, though I’ve never done any rate of return work thus far. Kreps is too abstract for real work. And there’s a lot of crossover between papers that they could streamline with a monograph.
So yeah, I was disappointed by 9, but liked it WAY better. I think I wouldn’t have had to cram so much on 7 at the end if I didn’t start slow by hating it so much.
ERM should be a 9 topic, IMO
True. And it is technically cause all of Section D is ERM.
Yea, Goldfarb in particular seems like it got lost on the way to the exam 9 syllabus. Goldfarb and Brehm should be exam 9. Also while we’re at it let’s just scrap Marshall entirely. God I hate that paper.