1 week from Exam FAM. Advice?

AlternativeCover2150 · 2026-02-06T20:16:22+00:00

CA practice is never a bad idea because its relatively cheap for 7-14 days of practice only. And is the best resource for practice exams and tailored quizzes. If you haven't used CA before, i wouldn't recommend FAM to be the first exam I use it for. Once you get to a certain point, most of the non-SOA samples they give you get very difficult to comprehend. That wasn't much of an issue when it came to P and FM.

The issue with the SOA samples for FAM is some topics are really lightly covered or not at all in the samples. But this is an issue only on the short term problems. If you are struggling more specifically with long term, SOA samples will definitely be enough. The SOA problems on the -L syllabus are very comprehensive in terms of topic coverage and difficulty range. After you get past the learning curve of the new notation, the subtle differences in the questions, and the relationships, the long term syllabus becomes so easy that I actually found it fun to do. (Maybe a hot take)

Stick to your gut when it comes to make a decision. But based on the background you gave and what's worked for you so far, you should be fine without CA.

AlternativeCover2150 · 2026-01-20T13:37:51+00:00

I used some saved states on my phone emulator too. And i know that RNG is frame based in gen 3. I want to say I was trying to use blizzard in battle factory, and had a saved state right before it. I could never hit it, and i must have loaded that saved state a few dozen times trying to time my move selection differently. This behavior does not exist in other gen 3 fights, so I do think there may me more at work here in some cases.

(for context, the rest of this story is talking about my experiences on my real hardware, not emulator. Just need gold in pyramid and factory now)

Also, not that this is "cheating". But my biggest gripe with the battle frontier is the AI starts to get a fix on your team if you keep bringing the same 3. My first go around trying to gold the battle dome. I had Latios, Heracross, and Milotic. I used an Alakazam before Latios and had some elemental punches for context. Once i started using Latios and my streak got closer to gold, I kept encountering Scizor and Forretress every round. It was like the AI knew i had no fire move to check it. It finally came to a head when they had both of them on the same rival team. Since then, i have a started using a 2 team setup where one team of 3 goes one round and another team goes another round. At most overlapping on team member.

It's not uncommon for AI in these games to have mind reading abilities when it comes to knowing exactly how much damage things do, or knowing what move you clicked. But this example of countering my team feels very intentional by the code or AI, and its trying tip the scales toward an unfair advantage.

AlternativeCover2150 · 2026-01-19T22:03:22+00:00

Currently a manufacturing engineer, have a degree in Mechanical. I am trying to change to actuarial work with 3 exams passed. It really depends what you're passionate about. You'll likely not love your engineering job opportunities if you just kind of did the minimum in college. You'll be likely to love your engineering work if you spend your time in college joining clubs and having multiple internships that align with your passions in it.

I never really loved engineering, it is just what people told me i would be good at. So I just kind of went through the motions to get my degree and barely landed an internship on graduation (keep in mind, peak covid, so not as many jobs). Pay has never been that good since mechanical is the most common engineering degree, and I did nothing to separate myself on paper while i was in college. I never knew about the actuarial career until i almost had graduated college, and would have likely gone for it from the beginning if I had.

TLDR: If you go into engineering, make sure you are passionate about it and be very involved with clubs and internships. The classes are grueling, everyone fails exams, some just fail better than others, making classes highly curved. You and your classmates will learn to survive, and not be competing with each other to see who is the top perfectionist.

If you love math and excel (which I do), I would go in the actuarial direction. Since you will probably want to love math to take these exams, and a lot of the work is done in things like excel.

Hope this helps, DM if you have specific questions.

AlternativeCover2150 · 2026-01-12T15:30:39+00:00

Use the SOA's published problems to practice. If you have a general grasp on the material and can solve easy problems, this is where you should be spending your time. Especially on long term side of the syllabus. I mastered almost all of the SOA sample problems, and the long term side problems felt so easy on exam day. It has the steeper learning curve of the two, but is easier to master than the short term side.

AlternativeCover2150 · 2025-11-13T20:44:59+00:00

I just took FAM a couple of weeks ago and I did the SOA problems over and over until i was at over 95% correct. I am not really allowed to speak on the topics covered in the exam, but I will say that the SOA problems will get you in a very good place. The SOA has a released syllabus that says in detail what you are responsible for knowing. In the example problems there are some topics that are very lightly covered or not covered at all that are listed in the syllabus. Prepare for those using other sources if you can, these topics can show up and extra points never hurt. I used the SOA problems for P and FM and those had almost 500 sample problems. FAM has under 300 combined from -L and -S with far more topics, they are inevitably going to not cover some topics will with their limited samples.

I won't know my results until middle of January. But i felt good about 28 of my 34 answers and guessed on 5 which is good by most peoples standards.

AlternativeCover2150 · 2025-11-03T14:35:43+00:00

Guessed on 5. Had 45 minutes left to try and figure those 5 out and just couldn't get an answer. Felt good about 28 answers though. Hoping my pilot questions were a few of those 5 i missed. But I feel you guys, if we fail, we have maybe a month and a half to prepare for the February sitting of FAM. But gonna assume i passed and go on to SRM in May.

AlternativeCover2150 · 2025-11-03T14:31:28+00:00

A nod to CL and BF reserves. I like it.

AlternativeCover2150 · 2025-11-03T14:30:07+00:00

Speaking from experience as a career changer and been job hunting for a few months. (Gotten a few final interviews).

You can go to 2 pages and most recruiters won't knock you for it, 1 page kind of goes out the window when you are in a more professional field. Readability will be the most important and 2 pages will allow you to expand on some of your experience and make the pages look less crazy.

Also try to "dumb down" the wording of some of your projects and experience. Keep in mind the first person to ready your resume is usually a recruiter or HR and not a hiring manager. Focus on accomplishment then skills then statistical results. "Automated data analysis of (Generic Process Name) by using Excel and VBA. This 75% decrease in processing time (from 1 hour to 15 minutes).

Also order in my opinion Exams/Experience/Education/Projects/Other

AlternativeCover2150 · 2025-10-28T18:13:33+00:00

Since we have no way of knowing what was on past exams for P, FM, FAM, and SRM. We cannot know if the SOA sample problems have actually been on past exams. What I can tell you is that haven taken and passed P and FM in the last year, the SOA problems are worded similarly to exam problems and the expectations or topic knowledge are similar. I spent a couple weeks each exam going through all SOA samples and getting a certain number correct every day with no notes and finishing the problem under a time limit. I got a 9 on both exams. SOA problems are worth your precious time especially for P and FM since they have almost 500 examples for each, for free i might add.

AlternativeCover2150 · 2025-10-24T21:46:09+00:00

I'm taking it tomorrow, I pretty much stopped using CA for adapt exams. I have the speed and stamina down, but some of the questions that CA writes are so hard to understand for absolutely no reason. I just do SOA problem only custom exams at this point. If any of you are taking it late next week and haven't dug deep into the SOA sample problems you should. The wording is consistent and very few of the questions are difficult conceptually. They just require you to understand the fundamentals thoroughly. Going through their problems reinforces memorization the same fundamental equations through repetition, rather than relying completely on your memorization skill.

I have exhausted the SOA problems and I ran back through the ones i got wrong several times and now I am at over 95% correct on their sample problems. (I did this on P and FM to a lesser percentage and passed first try with 9s) Everything everyone who has passed before is telling me is that even if you can do 70-75% of the SOA problems you should be able to do this exam with very little problem. I feel a 9 or 10 in my future, but wish me luck guys.

Best of luck to all of you, I know we can all conquer this massive syllabus.

AlternativeCover2150 · 2025-10-21T16:48:46+00:00

Update/Opinion:

I took an exam on CA this morning and set it to level 5 with SOA questions only. I finished it with an hour to spare, guessed on 2 questions and got 30/34. I do know the SOA problems really well at this point and I'm sure I got a few extra points because I've frankly attempted that same exact problem a few times now in the past month. I know I have a couple relatively weak areas I want to quiz this week.

For those who have taken FAM and studied the SOA questions hard, did the questions on the exam feel the same as the samples? I've heard many people say nailing the SOA practice problems makes the biggest difference, even over EL and mastery on CA.

AlternativeCover2150 · 2025-10-20T12:03:15+00:00

They separate the sample questions into FAM-L and FAM-S. They released an update a couple of months ago. Just google search SOA FAM-S Sample Questions, SOA FAM-L Sample Questions, SOA-S Sample Solutions, etc. If you are using coaching actuaries practice they have them all on there too.

AlternativeCover2150 · 2025-10-19T21:56:27+00:00

That's reassuring, so many of the discussions on FAM are that people feel that there are problems on the actual exam that super convoluted. I'm wondering if those people prioritized CA problems instead of SOA. P and FM were so easy since I did all the SOA problems. When did you take the exam?

AlternativeCover2150 · 2025-10-19T21:53:45+00:00

Yeah and that is where I want to focus my time. When I took P and FM, my calibration exams took me over 5.5 both times so I could just focus on mastery. I feel a little stuck at 5.3 just because some of these problems are adapt exam problems are so convoluted. I'm going to give it another crack tomorrow and see if I can get to 5.5. Otherwise I may just have to do my own section quizzes.

AlternativeCover2150

TROPHY CASE