We’ve now banned the users who’ve been sending those messages, and their ip addresses.
We don’t see direct messages, or even necessarily all posts here. So if you run into stuff like this, I appreciate your making us aware.
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Yeah, that is pretty strange:
Oct 2019: 1,080 attempts (all time high)
Oct 2020: 228
May 2021: 174
Yeah, the things I would have spent more time on if I had more time are never the things that would have helped me in the exam.
I don’t think so, here’s from the Exam Registration page:
Disclosure of Exam Questions
Candidates are reminded that it is strictly against the Examination Discipline Policy to disclose any exam question unless it has been publicly released by the sponsoring societies. All candidates agree to this restriction when applying for an actuarial exam.
I think original question was when would they be able to discuss “more generally”. Yeah, I think everyone is aware that no questions or specific sections were to be discussed, ever.
Personally - before the exam time window ends - I wouldn’t describe the exam in any terms, however general. The only thing I think you are allowed is say is something to the effect of - “OMG!” or “This sucked”
Bringing down the ban hammer, I like it.
Lol, thanks. We’re cowboys on a lot of stuff, but complying with cas/soa guidelines and rules around exams isn’t part of that.
Yeah the exam definitely gets harder every year.. like they are reading the study manuals and trying to counteract them or something. I just wrote it. I think they are trying to get too cute with some of the questions I know.. someone from cas will see the poor results and blame COVID:p ok maybe I am a little cranky
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You know they can’t possibly keep making it harder.
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It’s no longer good enough to test candidates on whether they understand the material. Too many people would pass. Now they try to make the questions are unrelated to the actual readings as possible.
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Sheesh, that was rough.
Does anyone not say “poor” for overall quality of the exam on the survey they make you do at the end.
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I spent some time writing things out and yes I did select poor for that one. It did not allow me to demonstrate my knowledge.
I think my biggest concern is that because of the NDA no one can discuss the questions meaning that
- it is hard to discuss/appeal alternate interpretations of a question
- without ever seeing the answers we have no idea what the grader intended.. not that we get to see those questions again outside an exam setting
- from memory there was a question I had no clue how to answer part of it. My issue is that should i have to write the test again, I still would have no clue how to answer it (if it gets recycled) because I can’t ask anyone how to solve it and with the source material in front of me I still don’t know how to answer it. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose here?
alright I will stop now:)
With any luck CAS has a change of heart and passes 90% of candidates (one can always dream:) )
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Completely agree with #3. There was also a part of a question that I’m unable to answer, even referencing source material.
I think CAS should allow a little more discussion on the exam problems after all candidates have taken their exams. I really don’t see the point of asking such difficult questions if no discussion is allowed. Do they want candidates to be prepared for all the problems on the exam, or do they want to continue asking these fringe or non-syllabus questions just to say almost no one gets a 9 or 10. It also has the effect that many people won’t pass on their first attempt just due to these “novel” questions, not because they don’t understand the material.
IMO, it shouldn’t be a problem to have some kind of idea what questions and topics are going to be on the exam. That’s the point of studying right? Even if you know exactly what topics you’ll be getting, you still have to study the material intensely and learn it well enough to reproduce it under exam conditions. It’s not like knowing that X topic is going to be tested is magically going to make you pass. You still have to put in the work to understand it so that you can execute and explain it clearly on exam day.
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Yeah just a dead battery so like an hour of lost time. But it was annoying.
Exam was rough. Expecting a 4 at best. I have to confess it was passable though. I was underprepared. The extra month of study lost due to waiting so long on 6 did actually hurt I think. I could’ve gotten there though.
For me it was long. Let me put it this way: if I had 9 hours to answer it, I will pass 100%. Right now it’s highly doubtful.
All said, I do not think the exam content itself is unfair in the sense of ability to differentiate candidates. I do concur with a previous post I think more studying would not have helped in my case either. Granted this is my 3rd sitting, so I’d like to think I have a firm grasp on material. I usually don’t have problems with time but this is one where I actually said something to the effect of (paraphrased here, obviously) “I would do ABC and then XYZ but then I don’t have time”. I hope for some leniency there.
I thought overall the exam that I got was more difficult than 2018 and 2019. Not sure if I would have done much better with additional time. Too many questions felt unanswerable
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Totally agree with #3. Without an examiner’s report, it is impossible for me resolve the questions I had no clue during the exam and see what actually the questions were testing on.
Since the window is now closed, I’m hoping it’s ok talk about the exam more specifically (no specific questions, of course).
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I had more than one problem that would have been time-prohibitive or otherwise virtually impossible to solve in a non-spreadsheet pen and paper environment. For example, I basically had to do set up cell formulas so that I could plug in various values to compare. I think it’s safe to say that the days of “just like a pen and paper exam” are over.
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Based on the way the current questions are written (including but not limited to the above example), no current study guide/program adequately prepares you to take the exam in the spreadsheet environment. If anyone from TIA/RF/whoever is listening, you need to update your study material to help students not only understand the material, but also what strategies/formulas to use in Pearson’s spreadsheet environment to solve potential problems. (For example, RANK or SMALL to sort, MMULT/MINVERSE to solve 2-by-2 systems of equations, FORECAST to linearly interpolate, etc.) As far as I know, no study guide does this yet.
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