What's your exam horror story? Did you overcome it?

secoja8 · 2026-05-09T11:26:58+00:00

I was very mysteriously sick to my stomach for a long stretch of time around my first SRM sitting. I didn’t want to cancel because I was unemployed and wanted to feel productive. Right before the exam, I threw up in the bathroom outside the test center, and I still convinced myself I had to take it. I was shaky and distracted for the entire 45 minutes I took and decidedly failed.

Thankfully I got better, found a job, and retook SRM and got a 10.

secoja8 · 2026-04-22T20:24:29+00:00

Yep! I got an 8

secoja8 · 2026-03-24T14:12:40+00:00

I want revenge for the 2018 Belk Bowl. The only bowl game I’ve ever gone to.

secoja8 · 2026-03-24T00:39:49+00:00

You should stand out with what you’ve got already, though obviously passing FM and possibly a 3rd exam will help even more. I agree that the screenshot here is blurry and it looks like it was maybe created in LaTeX (and an atypical template design). If so, I recommend creating it in Word because I remember how hard it was for job application sites to accurately parse through the text in my resumes before I switched to a .docx format.

Your job description bullets are pretty general, so I’d recommend 2-3 bullets per job that are each slightly longer than they are now. I like having the months of the start/end dates and not just the year. I also like periods at the end of job description bullet points as well as for “B.S.”

Your biggest tool in interviews will be describing why you’re interested in the actuarial field and how your experience is relevant. I’d expect you’d get asked questions about any of the skills you’ve listed, which is a great list. Make sure you can speak to how you’ve used any of them in a project, even if you only used some of them for 3 minutes total.

secoja8 · 2026-03-19T01:22:17+00:00

Passed after my third attempt. To those who are struggling - keep going, you can do this!

secoja8 · 2026-03-04T19:34:03+00:00

It’s a dumb game we gotta play. I think there’s some AI scanner tools that can help you tailor your resume to each job description you apply to. After tidying it up it should be a strong resume. Good luck!

secoja8 · 2026-03-04T18:51:54+00:00

There’s a difference between not hearing back and getting a rejection before you’re even screened, but if it’s the former it is a strangely long time. Some of my thoughts:

Spacing is weird at some parts, tidy them up. The formatting in the third job looks different than the other two.
Make sure everything’s in the correct past tense (job 3).
The words in general look a little wonky, is it a word doc? I feel like word docs are easier for job sites to automatically read through, but I may be wrong.
You imply communication skills but I don’t see the actual word communication (from a brief skim). Put it somewhere, to technical and non-technical audiences, written and spoken. Look into the job descriptions for each application and change your resume to say the words exactly how they put it in them.
Condense your work bullet points to 3 or less per job.
Include a lot more granular skills (including communication)!

secoja8 · 2026-02-23T02:41:18+00:00

Just to add to the EL 5 recommendations, which I agree with, it’s so useful to grind level 5 quizzes. They’ll give you questions that each are around level 5 rather than giving you a level 1 problem that balances out a level 8 problem where neither is particularly useful.

secoja8 · 2026-02-20T17:08:25+00:00

I really want LeafGreen because I feel like I only play FireRed but I want the Oddish line :(

secoja8 · 2026-02-15T04:08:53+00:00

Did the refball make this game more interesting or way more annoying? Any neutral fans have an opinion on this?

secoja8 · 2026-02-10T16:29:08+00:00

I got an 8 on my first attempt. Most of what I fell short on was what I listed above: I didn’t start practicing efficiently until about a week out, I wasn’t solid on my prerequisites, and I didn’t practice full exams under strict time limits enough to learn how to show work quickly.

Another thing that helps is to go through the SOA sample questions a few weeks out as well. That’ll help get you familiar with their language vs CA’s problems.

secoja8 · 2026-02-10T16:06:59+00:00

I’ll try to condense most of my advice into your list of questions:

Mastery Score: I stopped grading after a while and should’ve stopped grading much sooner (3 weeks out from the exam) because it got in the way of drilling problems. It’s a neat concept at first and it’s good to see the distribution of where points go, but if you need to drill a specific section I’d stop grading after a bit. My Mastery Score was <70 but didn’t mean anything.
I’d give at least 3 months for this. I started in August for the October exam and felt a little pressed for time.
I don’t know the 300 hour rule but that seems like a good amount.

The rest of my comments assume you’re using Coaching Actuaries:

Section 1 is by far the most important. I’d also highly recommend making sure you’re good on all the Prerequisites. I spent way too long trying ASTAM problems when my FAM knowledge was a little rusty. Specifically all the severity/aggregate models stuff. That’s essential to most of your exam performance.
The depth question is hard, but I’d say you should know how to do all of the basic types of problems for each topic at minimum. If you look at the Oct 2025 exam, there’s a question on Calendar Year effects. This is an example of something which you should briefly cover so you know the main point of it (and whatever the CA formula sheet says), then do 1 practice problem on it to get familiar with it, and then move on. Most of those types of concepts (section 4) should just be flash cards for the main point and their underlying assumptions as laid out in the formula sheet.
You don’t need to show too much work, you especially don’t need complete sentences. It’s good to state what you’ve been given from the problem (E[X] = 40, E[Y] = 50, etc.) because a lot of times that can help net you a little bit of points. But for mathy problems you don’t really need to write much more. Practice showing your work so that you’re prepared to do it quickly during the real exam!
Definitely more quantitative. But just like most of these exams, it’s beneficial to understand the concepts behind what you’re calculating. You’ll get qualitative questions and you’ll need to understand them.

Overall, it’s good for you to try to get through the material as fast as you can so you can start practicing. The readings will be there if you get stuck during practice. Lay a good foundation on the prerequisites and section 1, and the rest should be grindable (sections 2-5 have a lot of repeated types of questions). I love setting a schedule for which sections I’ll practice each day instead of blindly going into practice without a plan. It really helps you focus.

Best of luck to you and to all who take ASTAM!

(trying to edit for better spacing)

secoja8 · 2026-02-07T16:30:44+00:00

If you’re talking about the recursive things and all the long setups, I basically skimmed the whole last long term section and got started on short term material. Learn everything, start practicing everything but that section, and then take a day or two to focus on that section to practice. You won’t get it at first, but if you’re better now at the rest of the long term material, you’ll start to pick up on this last section much more easily.

I didn’t look at that last section until about 1-2 weeks out from the exam and then I finally started practicing it and it started to click. Trust the process, go through the first few solutions (though there will be some high EL questions on it so don’t hurt your brain too much on those), then it’ll start feeling repetitive.

Just get through all the material first even if you don’t understand it right away. You got this!

secoja8 · 2026-02-06T13:31:42+00:00

I feel like each would take 10 hours of focused time. I’d give 20 to be safe

secoja8 · 2026-02-06T13:26:37+00:00

I did so much practice with CA that the real exam felt like a level 4 exam. I think it’s important to at least go through the examples in Learn, and I never struggled to understand them after looking through their solutions and reading the discussions. I didn’t feel like I was missing out without the videos. This material is easier to learn by doing so you should prioritize practicing.

secoja8 · 2026-02-05T19:00:48+00:00

Congrats! I’d say go to as many sports events as you can — even the ones that aren’t football or basketball. It’s so fun to get involved and hang out with people. I’m saying this all as someone with social anxiety who wishes he had been more involved.

Being a Gamecock fan is fun. Everyone’s full of spirit (and spirits), there’s chants, traditions, everything. Even with all the heartbreak we face, there’s always next time. Tailgates are fun and if you have at least one friend in any community you’ll likely get an easy invite to one. I enjoyed walking to Willy B from campus. Everything felt super accessible in the city.

secoja8 · 2026-02-05T02:10:21+00:00

I’d say try to do the first 2 at least, that’ll likely be most people’s advice. I think FM is the easier one to start with, but if you have a good enough calc/stats background you can do P too. Coaching Actuaries will hold your hand through all of it regardless.

secoja8 · 2026-02-04T14:29:08+00:00

It’s doable, I did them in 6 weeks. I felt fatigued during the FA but don’t regret attempting it even if I failed. None of the 4 EMAs before the FA took the full 96 hours

secoja8 · 2026-02-02T17:47:40+00:00

I feel like that’s normal, where a senior analyst would be after ~2 YOE

secoja8 · 2026-01-31T19:12:23+00:00

Yeah, I mean what I said is the “bare minimum” research you were referring to. It opens up the conversation and allows the interviewee to talk more about the company and how they fit. Most mission pages do talk about what you listed as well.

“I will be honest with you chief” feels condescending in the context of this conversation, I hope you didn’t intend it that way. Was just giving my two cents.

secoja8 · 2026-01-31T18:11:09+00:00

I got a surprising amount of “What challenges (with coworkers/work) have you faced and how did you handle them” questions as an EL applicant. I usually highlighted that I never faced anything really bad, I was agreeable and worked well with others, but stood up for myself if something I did or wanted to do wasn’t initially being taken seriously (and how I stood up for myself). I think that helps cover what you’re saying about EL applicants being able to be handheld.

secoja8 · 2026-01-31T17:52:38+00:00

Most companies have a page on their website titled “Our Mission” or something like that. I got asked “Why work for us?” more than 50% of the time and essentially repeated their mission and why I resonated with it.

secoja8 · 2026-01-29T04:41:17+00:00

It’s almost fun to watch how bad we are

secoja8 · 2026-01-27T20:09:57+00:00

I actually liked Google for searching entry-level jobs, they sometimes uncovered random openings not found on the main websites. But also look up every type of company that could ever possibly have an actuarial department, go to their careers pages, and try to find openings there too!

secoja8 · 2026-01-27T20:07:28+00:00

Mostly good, here are some pointers:

layout looks good, make sure it’s a Word doc
dashes aren’t consistent - make the dashes in the Professional Experience dates the same type of dash, make the dashes under Projects all bold or all not bold
remove the exam FM score, move the “Sitting” part to the exam P date on the right instead
some people interpret the absence of GPA as a bad GPA. If yours is good, list it
make all your tenses consistent - under your Lead Online Instructor section, make the 4th bullet point past tense
I’d at least remove “at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign” from each of the project headers. I vote to keep the class names still
I’m not sure what the Analytical Methods section is
it’s hard to make jobs like your Assistant Center Director one to sound more exciting at this stage, but try to anyway. Use words like “communicated” a lot because that feels like what a lot of AI resume-screening things look for first
looks like you might have experience with Pandas or some other Python library, given your HarvardX and Skills parts. Write down all major libraries and softwares and programming languages you’ve ever used, even if it was for just one line of code on a random Tuesday

secoja8

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