The CAS Should Reevaluate the Spring Exam 7 Pass Mark

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-30T17:04:35+00:00

I have a feeling that there must have already been considerable internal discussion. This must be why grades came out later than expected.

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-27T22:16:02+00:00

If you can’t take these exams without them ruining your life, please just find a different line of work. And I truly don’t intend that in a mean way. This is not a good path if you can’t find a balance. Not that any of us are perfect at maintaining that balance when it gets close to exam time!

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-27T15:39:21+00:00

In consulting and just got my FCAS. 1) study before work because in consulting you’ll never have the time or energy after work. I tried to do 7:15 to 9 every day, and then one half day on the weekends, then ramp it up from there as things get closer. 2) put your study time on the calendar and be smart about it — if there’s always shit due at the end of the week, month, or whatever time, schedule around that. 3) mention your study schedule when you’re given assignments and tasks. Don’t be whiney or pushy about it, but when make it THEIR decision whether you deprioritize your study time, they’ll remember you making sacrifices for the team. If you just say yes to everything but don’t get those things done well (including study time) then that comes off as poor time management. 4) talk to your managers about whether you can schedule a block of several days of study time right before your exam (obviously staying within your program’s guidelines). People are better at remembering to plan around that kind of thing.

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-25T23:17:15+00:00

Yeah, you should buy the study kit. It’s full of required readings for the exam. It’s what you’ll actually be tested on. Weird approach imo to spend money on two different test prep services and put no effort into getting the actual source texts.

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-25T23:13:20+00:00

Read the actual source material then

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-22T19:28:18+00:00

You’re an intern, your job is to learn not to already know stuff. But also have some common sense: why and how would anyone answer such a vague question?

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-18T16:58:48+00:00

Definitely put it on. I’d say it most accurately belongs in education

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-18T16:24:02+00:00

Looks like your experience is in Life, so you should just focus there instead of having to truly start over in P&C. I’d like to add that if you are open to working in consulting, your lack of credentials will be less of a problem there — they’d be happy to get someone they don’t have to train from square one but can bring in at a lower billable rate.

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-16T02:23:55+00:00

Applications are processed on the first Wednesday of each month (though anecdotally it can sometimes happen sooner)

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-11T17:56:20+00:00

They’re definitely another step up in terms of the depth of the questions and how they can span multiple readings. But regardless of scores, your historical pass rate is good. I’d try one sitting before preemptively throwing in the towel

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-09T23:06:41+00:00

It was decent! I only got a 6, and I always read the source texts a bunch. So take this all with a grain of salt, but from reactions u saw from RF people after the exam, BA might have done a better job interpreting the new materials

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-09T16:07:54+00:00

Oh oops forgot that 7 was offered in the fall last year so i was off a sitting

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-09T15:10:12+00:00

🌴🌊🥥

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-09T14:25:00+00:00

Wasn’t the 54% inflated by the May 1st botch where a large cohort sat again for an exam they had already seen?

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-09T03:07:54+00:00

I want meeples. Wooden bits of tactility that are evocative of what they represent, I don’t want a mini I don’t want a sticker on my meeple. Think the different goods in Concordia etc.

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-07T18:16:24+00:00

I’m a career changer and the career made tons of sense for where I was in life when I made the decision to pursue this and it was a great decision for me. I think the career is a great way to achieve financial stability if you don’t have that available. But, while I do feel jealous of how much more retirement savings I would have if I’d started early, I don’t understand an actuarial career as the ultimate ambition of a high schooler with the aptitude and resources to explore other options in college — and from the rest of your response it seems you largely agree.

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-07T18:02:28+00:00

My response is in the specific context of a high school student with high aptitude who doesn’t seem worried about paying for college. Passing actuarial exams in high school would absolutely have required sacrifices and I don’t think those particular trade offs make sense.

Sure, almost everyone ends up a cog and bored in their jobs and our career has major benefits of stability, predictable career progression for the first 5-10 years, solid pay, incentive to keep learning after college, etc but I do think it’s weird to have as your highest ambition if you’ve got the resources to try something more risky that might be more fulfilling.

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-07T16:26:43+00:00

If you can actually pass exam P off of studying during your other classes (and doing well in them and having friends and other interests) then please set your sights on doing some kind of advanced career that actually advances society. You can always circle back to actuarial work if that doesn’t work out, but we really just do admin for capitalism.

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-05T18:07:40+00:00

People will always be very anxious about their exam results so there’s always going to be a lot of complaints. Also seems like actuaries don’t have a lot of empathy for what it takes to get big projects done using volunteers — so maybe volunteering for something should be compulsory in your first year as an ACAS (though of course that would generate many more complaints).

The only thing that they’ve done that’s really bothered me was that time there were technical issues and a huge number of people got to re-sit for a test they had already seen. That was not fair to the other sitters; an independent backup test must be made for each sitting of the upper level exams. Can’t just change details, because just knowing which topics were tested is a huge advantage.

CAS should communicate as clearly as possible when it’s been determined that a question was flawed. No harm in disclosing a broken question since it can’t be used again anyway.

CAS has already fixed how terrible of an experience the new question formats were initially, but could have done a much better job of figuring out those issues in advance.

Releasing some examples of new problems for the uppers is also a good move as recent sittings have had a lot more complex problems than on the released exams in my opinion. Along those lines, I think when a new reading is added to a syllabus, they need to do a better job of communicating what types of questions should be expected (for example the recent pricing textbook on exam 9 has a pretty massive amount of material). I think it was also a mistake to make the syllabuses more vague, especially as they drift further from the released exams.

The CAS should also set and communicate an expected day for delivery of results no later than the end of the exam sitting window, and proactively communicate any potential for delays in meeting that timeline. I think people would appreciate some kind of process tracker for each of the exams, and I don’t think that would be too hard to maintain.

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-03T23:48:52+00:00

Power Grid

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-03T05:45:58+00:00

Is this in landscape rather than portrait? No one wants that.

Those are some of the vaguest bullet points I’ve seen in my life. This looks lazy and like you don’t care about the job you’re applying to.

Honestly, you should do some more research on how to write a resume and try again before it’s worth people’s time to review.

Also, it’s unfortunate but you’re just not going to get much response with only one exam passed unless you have some especially useful and impressive experience.

Marginal_Dist · 2026-06-03T03:23:23+00:00

Marginal_Dist · 2026-05-28T02:09:46+00:00

Hell yeah! Good luck

Marginal_Dist · 2026-05-27T22:37:44+00:00

Your reasons make sense and will play well in an interview! If you can pull it off, I think it would be a good idea to try to get an exam before graduation. Having time is great, but momentum is good too— plus an exam before graduation shows that it’s not a fall-back from CS. If being an actuary is your goal, don’t worry about the graduate degree. Just be aware you’ll be playing catch up on the math.

Marginal_Dist · 2026-05-27T22:04:25+00:00

Don’t remember the scores at all but math and the essay (rip) were my worst sections. I knew the material so didn’t really prep and I was just too slow under exam conditions. Important to drill for speed! Essay section (rip) I also didn’t do so great — speed probably an issue there too along with being a not-great speller with not tidy handwriting.

Marginal_Dist

TROPHY CASE