I originally wrote this up the day after I passed the Exam. There is more stuff I'd like to add and some areas I'd like to polish, but short of leaving it in limbo forever I wanted to get this out there. I will come back and revise as the spirit moves me!
******************
So I recently passed Exam P. As a "career changer" with a full time job, wife, and 3 children (a 2 year old and 4 month old twins), I thought I could give some observations on how I prepared and how I would recommend others in similar situations should prepare. I'm going to stay away from the "why" and purely focus on the "how" here.
1. The first step I took, and this is the one that really convinced me to give Exam P a shot, is that I started reading Marcel Finan's pdf text book focused on Exam P. I would reccomend this to anyone who is even thinking about the exam. Read through the first 12 Chapters and see how comfortable you feel with the ideas in the material. I'm not saying you need to have mastered the material just yet, but you really need to have a good grasp of this material, as it is the basic foundation of the concepts in the exam.
2. Once you feel comfortable with that material, read Chapters 13-21 and try to do the associated problems. Discrete distributions are where you start seeing applications of the concepts, and the continuous distributions is where the material will start getting more difficult.
3. Ok, now that you have gotten this far, you need to learn calculus. When I started studying, it had been 17.5 years since my last calculus class. I had no recollection of any of the material at all. I found two great sources that will give you everything you need for this exam. The first is the book Calculus for Dummies by Mark Ryan. The book isn't very expensive, and you should be able to get it from the library. Chapters 1-14 are the important chapters for Exam P. He spends more time on integration of trig functions that you really need - read through this part but don't focus TOO much on the trig stuff. Chapter 15 is good to read as well, but not quite as important. The second source is The Calculus 1&2 tutor dvd set from MathTutorDVD.com. These DVDs are awesome! The instructor has a pleasant (if not a little dry) delivery, and I believe going through the whole set and taking detailed notes can get anyone up to the point they need to be for this exam. I ended up going back to certain chapters a few times as topics came up in future study that I wasn't feeling so comfortable with, I imagine you will do that as well.
4. Now, the rubber meets the road. For those of you who haven't studied math in a while, I think using only a study book is going to be difficult. The notation and conventions used, combined with some of the assumed knowledge (ie skipped steps in computations), will make the work difficult to follow. While the rest of the studying can be done using a textbook, I strongly recommend The Infinite Actuary's online Exam P course. Its not cheap, but then again, how much is your time worth? This course will save you at least 40 hours of studying - at $10 an hour, you have already saved the cost of the course. If you are a career changer with a family, time is your most valuable commodity, and the cost of the course is nominal compared with the actual value of the time it will save you. Also, you can email any question to Dave (the instructor), which is a nice resource to have.
5. Ok, you've spent a lot of time, and you've made it through all the material and all the practice problems. You are halfway there! Yes, I said halfway... Now, you need to work problems. A LOT of problem. Over and over. Then again and again. You need to work them until you can do it in your sleep (yes, I dreamed in Exam P material). You need to work them until you can recognize easily what needs to be done and can execute quickly. I used the SOA 149 sample problems and TIA Exams 1-4 (which are available for free even if you don't buy the course) as problems to work on. I made an Excel workbook that had one sheet for the SOA problems and one for the TIA. I listed out each problem vertically in 4 or 5 columns, and marked an X next to the ones I really felt I mastered. I had a formula that counted the X's and told me what percentage of the problems I mastered. This was great motivation, to constantly increase my percentage, and also gave me an assessment of how much more work I had to do. As I noticed which problems were giving me difficulty, I noted what type of problem it was, and did countif formulas to tell me what areas had the most problems I couldn't figure out, and those were the areas I focused more study on. I eventually got my SOA % up to 75 and my TIA % up to about 60. I never did master ALL of the material, but I did the best I could in the time allotted and I felt those levels at least gave me a chance to pass.
6. Now that you spent a few weeks doing that, you still have a week or so to go before the exam. Go back and redo EVERY problem, marking off the ones you can do quickly and efficiently in the same manner as above but on a new list. Your goal here is both speed and accuracy. This will ferret out the stuff you need a refresher on. As the week goes on and you review the areas that give you problems, redo those problems the in the next two days to drill the concepts in. Hopefully, you can get your percentage in this step near 70% or more.
7. In the two nights prior to the exam, roll back the problems working a little bit. Review the notes you have been making on formulas and concepts that have been problematic for you (I hope I needn't have told you to be taking notes every step of the way here). Watch Rocky 3 - that movie has some great analogies to this Exam studying process. Apollo at the beginning is college - you've beat him. The opponents Rocky was beating all along are your work assignments etc, stuff that you had to work to do, but wasn't as challenging as this. Clubber Lang - he is Exam P. Now, Apollo becomes the study guide you use, the online forums that provide guidance, etc.
Good luck!
**I'm adding this after having written the above post, I'll eventually get it into the body of the post but just found this and wanted to make sure it got linked from this page. Apparently in the time since I originally wrote this, The University of Wisconsin has put together this excellent resource for SOA sample questions. It is linked from the SOA Exam P page, and I wanted to mention it here because it looks like an excellent resource! Go check it out!
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
T minus 63
I haven't done much studying at all the past few days. I have been working on a project in the back yard that has been very physically demanding, and by the time I have tried to sit down to study I just haven't had the energy to absorb new material. The good thing is this should be done this week, and I still have a lot of time. Also, I will know how to schedule demanding projects in the future so as not to interfere with times I NEED to study. The break from studying hardcore has actually been nice, I've been putting in the time during my lunch hours and breaks, and little bits at night, but no long sessions.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
T minus 66
Still a long way to go, it is interesting to approach new material for the first time again. While the ideas behind the material are very familiar to me, some of the notation and scenarios and problems to solve are new and can be difficult. I'm sure I will get there, but the feeling of ending every night with still more to learn is reminiscent of studying for Exam P.
Also, I find having to do things around the house is really starting to reduce my study time. Better to do those projects now and treat it as a mental break, because the last few weeks leading up to the exam I will be focusing much more intensely on the material.
That brings up another interesting observation. When learning the material for the first time, I can't quite put in the marathon hours I did when trying to master the problem solving. It seems the brain limits me to 2-3 hours max per session, sometimes less. When I was working through the problem solving portion of Exam P, I could go on and on until I just needed to sleep! Hopefully I will hit that kind of stride again when I get to that portion of the studying.
I am a little behind the pace I set for myself on the material, but I do have a lot of wiggle room in the pace at this point, and I think I will get through some of the later chapters ahead of pace.
My confidence level at this point is very high - 8.5.
Also, I find having to do things around the house is really starting to reduce my study time. Better to do those projects now and treat it as a mental break, because the last few weeks leading up to the exam I will be focusing much more intensely on the material.
That brings up another interesting observation. When learning the material for the first time, I can't quite put in the marathon hours I did when trying to master the problem solving. It seems the brain limits me to 2-3 hours max per session, sometimes less. When I was working through the problem solving portion of Exam P, I could go on and on until I just needed to sleep! Hopefully I will hit that kind of stride again when I get to that portion of the studying.
I am a little behind the pace I set for myself on the material, but I do have a lot of wiggle room in the pace at this point, and I think I will get through some of the later chapters ahead of pace.
My confidence level at this point is very high - 8.5.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Exam 2/FM Scheduled
I have scheduled exam 2 for 8/23. I added a counter to the top right portion of the blog. T minus 73 Days!
I have already spent 7-8 hours studying, I should be well on my way for this one!
I have already spent 7-8 hours studying, I should be well on my way for this one!
Friday, June 4, 2010
6/4 - I passed!
It's true - somehow, I passed.
In taking inventory of how I felt about each question, there were 14 questions I felt really solid on, 5 I felt about 70-80% on, and 11 I was doing some degree of guesstimating on. There are 30 questions overall - only 25 count, but you don't know which 25. The passing score has been about 63% recently, but I don't believe they will release the passing percentage as applied to this exam until sometime in the future.
I spent the full 3 hours, and could have spent even more time. Many of the 14 were the type of questions I was used to, but a lot of those were worded very trickily. I actually went back and changed maybe 3-4 answers on those after rereading the question and noticing I calculated something that didn't quite match the wording.
There were a couple of questions that I could swear I was calculating correctly, but the answers I kept getting were not one of the available choices. In one case I just took the closest answer, and in another case I don't remember exactly what I did. I think I took the closest, but even running the numbers a few different ways I never got an answer that was one of the available choices.
So as I tallied up my feelings on each of the answers, I felt I would be close to passing. I figured even on the questions I was very confident on I probably had one math mistake, so depending on how good I was with the 70-80% confidence questions and how good I was with the guesstimate questions, I thought I had a chance to get there. By the time I got to the point where the "Congratulations" screen would come up, I was just kind of worn out and wasn't feeling much anxiousness about it either way. Once I saw that I passed, I let out an audible "Oh wow".
A funny side story: As was being checked out of the testing center, I asked the two women working there if anyone had ever hugged them on the way out. One said she had been hugged, high fived, etc, but the woman working on my data was kind of surprised by the question and said she had not. The more she thought about it, the more amused she was by the whole concept, and by the time I left she actually gave me a hug for making her day by having the conversation with her. I could see that she was very happy that I was trying to be engaging with her, and it was fun to be able to make someone's day by throwing them off guard like that!
The exam window for Exam 2 is Aug 19-25, or about 10 weeks away. I am going to start looking at the material in a day or two and see if I feel I can hit that deadline. I think I will be able to. The window to register for the exam ends July 8, so I do have some time to decide...
In taking inventory of how I felt about each question, there were 14 questions I felt really solid on, 5 I felt about 70-80% on, and 11 I was doing some degree of guesstimating on. There are 30 questions overall - only 25 count, but you don't know which 25. The passing score has been about 63% recently, but I don't believe they will release the passing percentage as applied to this exam until sometime in the future.
I spent the full 3 hours, and could have spent even more time. Many of the 14 were the type of questions I was used to, but a lot of those were worded very trickily. I actually went back and changed maybe 3-4 answers on those after rereading the question and noticing I calculated something that didn't quite match the wording.
There were a couple of questions that I could swear I was calculating correctly, but the answers I kept getting were not one of the available choices. In one case I just took the closest answer, and in another case I don't remember exactly what I did. I think I took the closest, but even running the numbers a few different ways I never got an answer that was one of the available choices.
So as I tallied up my feelings on each of the answers, I felt I would be close to passing. I figured even on the questions I was very confident on I probably had one math mistake, so depending on how good I was with the 70-80% confidence questions and how good I was with the guesstimate questions, I thought I had a chance to get there. By the time I got to the point where the "Congratulations" screen would come up, I was just kind of worn out and wasn't feeling much anxiousness about it either way. Once I saw that I passed, I let out an audible "Oh wow".
A funny side story: As was being checked out of the testing center, I asked the two women working there if anyone had ever hugged them on the way out. One said she had been hugged, high fived, etc, but the woman working on my data was kind of surprised by the question and said she had not. The more she thought about it, the more amused she was by the whole concept, and by the time I left she actually gave me a hug for making her day by having the conversation with her. I could see that she was very happy that I was trying to be engaging with her, and it was fun to be able to make someone's day by throwing them off guard like that!
The exam window for Exam 2 is Aug 19-25, or about 10 weeks away. I am going to start looking at the material in a day or two and see if I feel I can hit that deadline. I think I will be able to. The window to register for the exam ends July 8, so I do have some time to decide...
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
6/2 - additional thoughts
Ok, spent some more time doing the SOA problems tonight, and after that spent some time assessing what it is I still don't know. I don't expect the areas I am shaky in to big a huge part of the test, maybe as large as 25%, but possibly as low as 10%.
I plan on crash reviewing a few things I know but need to spend more time memorizing tomorrow. I am surprised to find all the things I have memorized now in relation to how confused I was when I looked at most of these questions the first, second or third time!
To continue the boxing analogy I used in the last post, I decided to watch a Rocky movie on Netflix tonight while reviewing formulas. In a way I kind of feel like Rocky, taking on something that is difficult even under the best of circumstances. I have studied nearly every night for the past 2 months with every free moment I can put together - lunches, breaks at work, listening to mp3s while driving, you name it. At times I thought I had no chance, but I kept pushing, and even if I don't pass this time around I am confident I can do it next time around. I will be making every effort to pass this time, so hopefully I can begin to work on Exam 2. Exam 2 should be easier for me given my background, so I expect to go through that material at a similar pace.
Ok, off to try to get some rest!
I plan on crash reviewing a few things I know but need to spend more time memorizing tomorrow. I am surprised to find all the things I have memorized now in relation to how confused I was when I looked at most of these questions the first, second or third time!
To continue the boxing analogy I used in the last post, I decided to watch a Rocky movie on Netflix tonight while reviewing formulas. In a way I kind of feel like Rocky, taking on something that is difficult even under the best of circumstances. I have studied nearly every night for the past 2 months with every free moment I can put together - lunches, breaks at work, listening to mp3s while driving, you name it. At times I thought I had no chance, but I kept pushing, and even if I don't pass this time around I am confident I can do it next time around. I will be making every effort to pass this time, so hopefully I can begin to work on Exam 2. Exam 2 should be easier for me given my background, so I expect to go through that material at a similar pace.
Ok, off to try to get some rest!
6/2 - T minus 2
Been quiet on the posting front because I have been focusing 100% of my attention on the studying front. Been hitting the problems and reviewing the concepts every chance I can. I am up to over 75% on the SOA questions, and over 60% on the TIA exams.
I am resigned to the fact that there are some topics I'm just not going to be able to figure out in time. A few types of problems I have tried to work through, putting in a ton of hours over last weekend, but still can't frame them in my head in a way I can remember and execute. I get the gist of what I need to do, so that may help in guesstimating, but I have turned to making sure I have mastered the concepts I already know in the past few days rather than trying to figure out the last few things. My logic is that I want to ensure I do the 70% of stuff I can right, which should be enough in itself to pass. Now, I am sure I will make some math errors and not be able to figure out what I need to do a couple of times, so I don't imagine I will even be perfect on that 70%. The way I look at it now is that I have a "puncher's chance" on this exam. If I can play my cards right, keep my cool, and get a decent set of questions, all I gotta do is hit them just right and with the right timing and I may be able to get out of there with a pass. I am by no means a shoo-in or overconfident on this, but I think I've got a shot.
If I don't pass this time around, the next round is in 7 weeks, and I am pretty confident I will pass then. I've spent only 8 weeks studying, some of that just learning the prerequisites, and I've gotten this far! With 7 more weeks, I will be in great shape for try 2. I'm not focusing on that just yet though, I'm really going to give it a go on Friday!
I don't know if the confidence level really applies anymore, but I could really say it is anywhere from a 3 to a 6. 7 seems too high, and 2 too low. So, assuming it is uniformly distributed on 3->6, my confidence level it at 4.5.
I am resigned to the fact that there are some topics I'm just not going to be able to figure out in time. A few types of problems I have tried to work through, putting in a ton of hours over last weekend, but still can't frame them in my head in a way I can remember and execute. I get the gist of what I need to do, so that may help in guesstimating, but I have turned to making sure I have mastered the concepts I already know in the past few days rather than trying to figure out the last few things. My logic is that I want to ensure I do the 70% of stuff I can right, which should be enough in itself to pass. Now, I am sure I will make some math errors and not be able to figure out what I need to do a couple of times, so I don't imagine I will even be perfect on that 70%. The way I look at it now is that I have a "puncher's chance" on this exam. If I can play my cards right, keep my cool, and get a decent set of questions, all I gotta do is hit them just right and with the right timing and I may be able to get out of there with a pass. I am by no means a shoo-in or overconfident on this, but I think I've got a shot.
If I don't pass this time around, the next round is in 7 weeks, and I am pretty confident I will pass then. I've spent only 8 weeks studying, some of that just learning the prerequisites, and I've gotten this far! With 7 more weeks, I will be in great shape for try 2. I'm not focusing on that just yet though, I'm really going to give it a go on Friday!
I don't know if the confidence level really applies anymore, but I could really say it is anywhere from a 3 to a 6. 7 seems too high, and 2 too low. So, assuming it is uniformly distributed on 3->6, my confidence level it at 4.5.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)