J
jeaneu
Member
City Graduate Speaking!
Right I'm a City graduate currently working as a trainee actuary, having just taken my CA1 exam and I thought I'd share my experiences after reading all your posts.
I did BSc Actuarial Science at City, and yes I was 18 when I started studying for the equivalent of the CT exams. Being at uni and studying full time is ALOT easier than working and studying. We had lectures from 9-5 most days, and on top of that an endless stream of courseworks, assignments, projects, especially in the 2nd and 3rd year of the course. On top of that, I used to also stay back after the last lecture, and go to the library to study, often up til 10pm at night, especially when the exams were near, in order to cover everything that was required (and to finish off courseworks!).
As far as the exams were concerned, it's not as easy as passing the exam and getting an exemption straightaway. The uni pass mark for the exam is about 40%, HOWEVER in order to get an exemption you had to get about 60-65%, which I believe is about the same as the pass mark for the IoA CT subject exams.
The lecturers are all qualified actuaries and most of them have worked as actuaries before coming into teaching. A few of them even write the core reading for some of the IoA subjects. So I would presume if the institute sees them as competent enough to write core reading, they would be competent enough to set decent exams. And like avanbuiten said, the exam papers have to be seen by the institute examiners before a pass mark for exemptions can be agreed. As far as I know the papers are marked at least twice - once by the lecturers at uni, and then a sample is marked by the IoA people, after which the rest of the exams are scaled up/down, depending on the difference between institute marking and uni marking (I think).
The other thing you have to bear in mind about why it might be easier to pass exams at uni than with the institute is that often the paper is written by the lecturer who's teaching you the subject, and towards the exam, some of them are more likely to give you hints as to what might be in the paper. Also, for the ones that don't give hints, all past exam papers for the subject would most probably have been written by the same person, so the style and even the order and type of questions asked often follow a pattern. You don't get this with the IoA exams, as the papers are written by different people each time round.
As for whether I gained anything from studying solely for 3 years, the answer is yes. I got a first, and exemptions from CT1-8, which I think are probably harder to study than the later subjects when you are in employment. I may not have had the experience in the actuarial field, but I certainly knew the basics. I went into employment at least understanding some actuarial principles, and could answer a lot of technical questions about actuarial theories, e.g. pricing and reserving (I was asked this in my interview and was told that I performed so well out of all the candidates they had to make up extra questions for me). As opposed to what some of my friends (who also graduated form City) tell me about people becoming actuarial consultants without the vaguest idea of actuarial knowledge.
Mind you, when I was at City, I was advised against doing an MSc to get the 300/ST series. This was where the experience/study balance came into play - I was told that it'll be even harder to find employment if I had too many qualifications and not enough experience.
Also, by the time we got to our 3rd year, most of the weaker candidates had already been weeded out - the number of people in my year had dropped from 110 to about 70.
And just to give you an idea of the number of City graduates from my year who found employment: 70 of us graduated. About 30 of us got first class honours degrees. 7 of us are currently in actuarial employment. Of these 7, 3 of us have 1st class honours. I know of about 10-15 other people who are in employment, but as accountents/investment bankers/business analysts - they simple couldn't get jobs as trainee actuaries, but are hoping that in one year's time or so, they'll be able to find actuarial jobs.
I had to apply to practically every single actuarial employer listed on the institute's website and go through about 50 rejections before I found my current job. So it's not as easy as it seems...
Right I'm a City graduate currently working as a trainee actuary, having just taken my CA1 exam and I thought I'd share my experiences after reading all your posts.
I did BSc Actuarial Science at City, and yes I was 18 when I started studying for the equivalent of the CT exams. Being at uni and studying full time is ALOT easier than working and studying. We had lectures from 9-5 most days, and on top of that an endless stream of courseworks, assignments, projects, especially in the 2nd and 3rd year of the course. On top of that, I used to also stay back after the last lecture, and go to the library to study, often up til 10pm at night, especially when the exams were near, in order to cover everything that was required (and to finish off courseworks!).
As far as the exams were concerned, it's not as easy as passing the exam and getting an exemption straightaway. The uni pass mark for the exam is about 40%, HOWEVER in order to get an exemption you had to get about 60-65%, which I believe is about the same as the pass mark for the IoA CT subject exams.
The lecturers are all qualified actuaries and most of them have worked as actuaries before coming into teaching. A few of them even write the core reading for some of the IoA subjects. So I would presume if the institute sees them as competent enough to write core reading, they would be competent enough to set decent exams. And like avanbuiten said, the exam papers have to be seen by the institute examiners before a pass mark for exemptions can be agreed. As far as I know the papers are marked at least twice - once by the lecturers at uni, and then a sample is marked by the IoA people, after which the rest of the exams are scaled up/down, depending on the difference between institute marking and uni marking (I think).
The other thing you have to bear in mind about why it might be easier to pass exams at uni than with the institute is that often the paper is written by the lecturer who's teaching you the subject, and towards the exam, some of them are more likely to give you hints as to what might be in the paper. Also, for the ones that don't give hints, all past exam papers for the subject would most probably have been written by the same person, so the style and even the order and type of questions asked often follow a pattern. You don't get this with the IoA exams, as the papers are written by different people each time round.
As for whether I gained anything from studying solely for 3 years, the answer is yes. I got a first, and exemptions from CT1-8, which I think are probably harder to study than the later subjects when you are in employment. I may not have had the experience in the actuarial field, but I certainly knew the basics. I went into employment at least understanding some actuarial principles, and could answer a lot of technical questions about actuarial theories, e.g. pricing and reserving (I was asked this in my interview and was told that I performed so well out of all the candidates they had to make up extra questions for me). As opposed to what some of my friends (who also graduated form City) tell me about people becoming actuarial consultants without the vaguest idea of actuarial knowledge.
Mind you, when I was at City, I was advised against doing an MSc to get the 300/ST series. This was where the experience/study balance came into play - I was told that it'll be even harder to find employment if I had too many qualifications and not enough experience.
Also, by the time we got to our 3rd year, most of the weaker candidates had already been weeded out - the number of people in my year had dropped from 110 to about 70.
And just to give you an idea of the number of City graduates from my year who found employment: 70 of us graduated. About 30 of us got first class honours degrees. 7 of us are currently in actuarial employment. Of these 7, 3 of us have 1st class honours. I know of about 10-15 other people who are in employment, but as accountents/investment bankers/business analysts - they simple couldn't get jobs as trainee actuaries, but are hoping that in one year's time or so, they'll be able to find actuarial jobs.
I had to apply to practically every single actuarial employer listed on the institute's website and go through about 50 rejections before I found my current job. So it's not as easy as it seems...