Ain’t that the truth. Jan 2012 for me.
I decided to find a nice notecard app to use. I want this to be my last exam enough that I’m willing to pay for it. I wanted to use Anki (used it in the past, liked it), but the desktop version has to be downloaded, and that’s too much of a hassle on my work PC. So I landed on www.brainscape.com. It’s $10 per month, so I definitely wouldn’t be using it if I didn’t only have to use it for a couple of months. It’s got a nice rating system, and I let it decide which cards I’m learning/reviewing. It mixes reviewing old cards and learning new cards. I have all of my cards typed up on it, if someone wants the CSV file so they can load it into their system let me know.
What do you guys use to learn these notecards?
I dont use traditional notecards. I effectively just type up all the notecards i want into a word doc and group them into sections. Then I just read and try to replicate them over and over.
For the section on considerations for product pricing (new ltc), i am struggling on how much of this to know. there is a core lists of considerations, but then also 8 sublists for takeaways for each one. It just seems like a lot of sub lists to memorize. I am particularly nervous about this section since it was new this year and has not been asked yet.
I just finished writing all my notecards for that section. just seems like a lot of dense language that will be hard to memorize.
Memorized like 160/192 mate notecards and retaining like half the information on the remaining notecards. Gonna grind out the other 32 then do quantitative problems and study ASOPs as I feel thoae are my two weekest areas rn.
What worked for me was reading the notecard, writing it down in my own words to make sure I understood it, then just trying to memorize it from there. Skipped like 2 longer ones about what to put on a risk register and types of operational risk because I thought it wasnt worth remembering every single one of those
For longer lists (10+ items) I would just memorize 70-80% of the list. If you can crank out 7 out of 10 list items you will most likely get full points on the exam.
I made sure to memorize every single notecard. My trick was to memorize one keyword from each bullet point from each notecard. This way I could go through and recite all ~200 notecards in just a couple of hours.
For me the most effective way to memorize notecards was to summarize each bullet point and write them all down. I would do this for about 5 notecards at a time until I had them memorized. Once I went through the entire stack of notecards I would try to memorize 10 at a time (10 is usually a whole chapter). Then I would try to memorize multiple chapters at once. After my 3rd pass of writing down all the notecards I would be pretty comfortable recalling 30-50 at a time. (You will be surprised how many notecards your mind can store. I know I certainly was.) On my 4th pass I had distilled each bullet point down to a single word or two. I would use these keywords to recall the entire bullet point. After the 5th pass I would create two stacks of cards -the first stack for the cards I knew and a second for the ones I did not. I would focus on the ones I did not know until the stack was basically just all ASOP cards.
ASOP cards were always a struggle to summarize and memorize. I would group all the ASOP cards together and go through those every day.
Now that the exam is computer-based I don’t think writing down each card is significantly more beneficial than typing up each card. But it is way quicker to whip out a pen and paper than to boot up a word processor. I would write down cards whenever I had any free time. I even had my wife read the header of each card to me so I could I recited each line back to her during a drive.
Notecard memorization was instrumental in my passing my 3 GH FSA exams in back to back to back sittings, I preach its importance to all the FSA hopefuls at my company.
My main takeaway from these posts is I’m not passing this exam anytime soon.
It’s doable compared to the other FSA exams. I think the trick is to not put in only 2/5 the effort of the 5 hour exams, but to treat it like a full exam. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.
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yes. while ‘only’ a 2 hour exam, it feels like it has about 70% of the material of a full exam.
I am just finishing a loooong exercise in re-typing all of my notecards. almost 4 weeks of going through everything in the M8 manual and also all of my study notes from the spring exam. This forced me to re-touch every single list and think about how to approach questions on every topic. I even forced myself to do all of the less desirable ERM lists and ASOPs. Im hoping to finish the last of the ACA risk adj sections today or tomorrow. I think my notes are solid, now its time to memorize them. All 60 pages of them (~200 note cards).
Its October: time to give up our lives again to go full tilt for the next 4 weeks. No excuses, time to grind it out.
BF, we should meet up at an SOA conference some time for a drink if we can ever pass.
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I’m done-ish summarizing most of the material. Not so much “done” as “stopped”/ called it. Some got summarized partially and some readings didn’t get summarized at all, most notably various ERM and the ACA instability paper.
I like my notes. I summarize whatever I feel like- sometimes an entire paper fits on one handwritten page so it’s just a really brief map of main ideas sometimes I’m more detailed than the manual at points. I am nowhere in the memorizing.
S21 was my first attempt. I skipped a lot of the ERM and ASOP sections for lack of brain space.
for F21 I have added all of those sections to my notes. I am still a little traumatized by the amount of ASOP questions on the spring exam.
I am entering drill mode for the next 3 week. I have all my notecards done. Time to hammer them into the ground.
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Anyone else just saying fuck it to a few different smaller topics? Im hoping my knowledge of the principles of grouper models is adequate. But I’m not studying the specific commercial models outside of DRG and the HCCs. If I get a Q on the Wakely Risk Assessment model, Im screwed there.
Yeah, I’m definitely not going to know everything by the time the exam comes. I get in my own head sometimes though when I’m studying. I start to think “this probably won’t even be on the exam,” except I think that with everything I study… those are usually my unproductive study sessions 
You don’t need to know the ins and outs of each model, just know the pros and cons of them.
The only questions I can see them asking is listing them or comparing them. No way they will expect you to go into any deeper detail
drilling notecards like crazy this week. Still having a hard time memorizing everything. Not sure how I feel about this exam. Could be hit or miss.
As bad as it may sound, I feel as though Im doing great compared to what others are saying. Im using TIA videos and MATE notecards and have been hardcore reviewing ERM & Risk Adjustment the past 2 weeks. I reviewed Mate cards for those sections last night and was able to perfectly get 142/143 flash cards. Gonna grind the first chapter for the next few days, review old exams, and quantitative Qs.
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I’m a queen of cram so I’ll make people feel better. Just started really memorizing the MATE cards today. I’ve gone through them once to really understand but haven’t started really memorizing before today. My goal is to do 50 a day ( I mean have them totally memorized) and I did 45 today but it’s only 3pm. Then after the 4 days I’ll read the MATE manual (I’ve watched the TIA videos a couple times but haven’t read the manual or any outlines yet lol). Then I’ll do a practice exam or two and finish up the MATE problem set with the remaining days, maybe watch the TIA videos one more time. I feel fine about the exam, just gonna go hard this last week.
That doesn’t make me feel better at all.
But I’ll try to be optimistic anyway. There’s a chance!
hammer time. drill… drill… drill…
I am picking random sections, writing all the notecards out for it, then reading the additional notes I have, then doing practice calcs if it is a calc section. I also look back at prior 4 exams to see if/how it has been tested. I am doing about 5 sections day.
Starting to feel like I have >0% chance to pass.
complaint on M8 practice problems- lots of old questions from 2008-2015. would like to see more recent stuff on it.
Am able to get through all 192 Mate flashcards perfectly (with the exceptions of 1 bullet on considerations for a capital adequacy assessment and 1 bullet on considerations for setting capital thresholds/limits).
Gonna grind quantitative problems and past exams tomorrow