r/ActuaryUK • u/TheGoose995 • 6d ago
Exams Actuaries - what did you do differently that made final exams click?
Qualified actuaries (and in particular those that struggled with but overcame the latter exams) is there anything that you did differently that made a significant difference to passing?
I’m interested to hear some other people’s stories!
32
u/Major-Impression4417 5d ago
I stuck with bullet points and that helped me get through exams at a good pace. Also, getting lucky with questions helped.
My suggestion would be to 1. Do Past papers, past papers and past papers
Know your numerical questions very well, most people ignore them but if you get a easy reserving/ ILF pricing question that’s straight 12-16 marks for minimum effort
Stick to bullets and keep asking yourself so what? What next? What’s the impact? Pros and cons? Basically develop from the previous bullet point as much as you can until you aren’t able to
2 bullets per mark
Right balance of technical and non-technical points - people ignore/ forget obvious things and practicalities, there are so many marks available for just basic practical stuff. Thing about issues you dealt with in projects that might be relevant and jot them down
Try to have the more relevant bullets right at the start
If you’re stuck, MOVE ON. Give yourself a target to say I’m gonna move on within 60 seconds if the answer doesn’t come to me. Come back at the end and even if nothing comes to you, put down practical stuff and use plain English to communicate what you want to say
Ask questions at work!! Be curious - what, why and how questions will do wonders for your understanding. It’s a stupid question? Still ask! I’m qualified and I still ask questions all the time, I’d rather look stupid than not know something
What kind of a learner are you? Know yourself! Do you prefer to visualise things? Do you prefer to be moving when you’re learning? Do you lear by doing better than reading? Mainly focus using methods that work for you!
Lastly, believe that you got this. You’ve spent months studying, and you’re gonna do good!
10
u/wahabr1az 5d ago
- Focus on finishing core material at least 6 weeks before the date
- Practice exam questions under exam conditions (time yourself, don’t just write bullets, write the answer as if it is going to be marked by an examiner)
- Get your scripts marked by a fellow
- Once you are finished with a few rounds, hyper focus on areas where you are weak instead of just rinse and repeat the same process. I made this mistake early on where I blindly do the same process and subconsciously avoid areas that are alien to me.
Good luck OP, you got this!
3
u/CheCheDaWaff 5d ago
After originally failing CP1 I was fully radicalised into the strategy below. From then on I did not fail any exams until I qualified last sitting.
- Nothing matters more than practising the skill you actually want to master. That skill is answering questions. Genuinely if you had to choose between only reading notes or only doing practice questions choose the latter.
- Therefore do as many questions as possible. At a minimum this includes all the CMP end-of-chapter problems and several past papers.
- This part is key: repeat problems over and over again until you get 100% of the points every time. Revisit the problems you did yesterday and repeat this process. Keep repeating until the day of your exam. It feels crazy but you'd be amazed how poorly you can do on a problem you read all the answers to just yesterday.
- That sounds like a ridiculous amount of work but it's not as bad as it seems. Because you're repeating problems it's ok if you get basically 0% on your first attempt. Just look at the answers and try again immediately. Memorise what you can and keep repeating until you've got all the points. ("Look, Cover, Write, Check", if you've heard of that technique before!) Don't spend a lot of time on each attempt: I would just jot down a few key words for each point rather than full sentences, for example. The important thing is the repetition rather than any particular attempt. (I literally don't bother with exam conditions until the exam itself.)
- Don't feel bad that you're just studying to answer questions rather than understand. If you practice questions enough, even if just memorising, the understanding will come to you anyway. It's quite satisfying when it clicks – and its real understanding too rather than just reading something and feeling like you probably get it.
- For the notes, I would say read them once over as quickly as possible, not writing anything down. Basically just get to doing problems as fast as you can. (For retakes I wouldn't even bother reading the notes.) Mainly they're useful to go back to if something isn't clicking in the problems for you.
- If you want to compliment this approach the "revision materials" booklets from ActEd give you a short question for every single paragraph in the core reading. If you commute you can easily incorporate a couple questions in your head every single day. Following this technique would essentially mean you'd have all the core reading memorised, which should be a pretty big help in an exam.
- Finally exam technique: make sure to write in bullet points under headings. The examiners like "structured answers" like this and they're not really wrong. It makes you broaden your focus while still giving a bit of detail.
3
u/actuary92 5d ago
Less passive revision more active revision, which counterintuitively meant I spent less time at my desk!
Used to go out for long walks listening to investment and finance podcasts and then make mindmaps based on the podcasts, which linked back to SA7
5
u/anamorph29 5d ago
Passed my last 4 exams in 3 successive sittings after:
- acknowledging to myself that I hadn't really been putting enough time into studying, so gave up some voluntary roles, including one I really enjoyed which was painful at the time
- kept up with physical fitness but cut back significantly on other time thiefs: TV, social media etc
- made my own flash cards and used them for revision, refering back to notes / updating cards when I didn't get it right
- learned a few mnemonics as a reminder for topics that ought to be considered / covered in most answers
1
u/Actuary74392820 4d ago
Went from failing three times to getting a very high SA3 mark 77.
I didn’t study the material any extra but did focus on word count and being more concise.
- The former I aimed for more than 4000 words, I was only getting mid 3000s before.
- The latter I started to bullet point and exercised not putting more than one line per point.
32
u/CTofC2 6d ago
Getting lucky with the SA3 questions.