5/24 - T minus 11 - I want to believe

I am starting to think I can get there. I am piecing the concepts together little by little, and feel like in 10 more days I can at least have a reasonable shot to pass.

In working on the SOA questions, I am over 50% in regards to the ratio of questions I am comfortable with. There are still more I can currently answer, but I'm only counting questions I think I can do relatively quickly and with little potential for major error. I am over 40% on the TIA sample exams 1-3, which seem to be a little tougher.

For the first time tonight, I am really starting to feel confident. A very cautious confidence, but a confidence that I think I can get there. The next 10 days will be crucial, that goes without saying (yet I said it anyway), but I feel like I can see the home stretch as far as knowledge I need to master. I just hope 10 days is enough time. I'd love another week, but I don't have that option.

One thing I did today that should help is categorize all the remaining SOA and TIA questions I am having trouble with, so I know exactly what material to review. I am grouping them by topic, so those topics with the most outstanding questions are those I need to prioritize.

5/23/10 - T minus 12

I put a TON of hours in over the past 3 days. I am getting there little by little. I have been reviewing the SOA 149 exam questions and noting which questions I answered successfully and feel like I will again with a similar question. I have gotten the percentage of those questions up from around 30 to almost 43% over the past few days. There are still some that I have no idea where to go with, and those are areas I will have to get up to speed on.

I have 12 days to go, and the pass mark for Exam P over the past few sittings has been around 63%. I'm going to assume that the exam is harder than the SOA, plus there will be questions I am not familiar with, so I'd really like to get my comfort with the SOA questions over 80%. Ideally, I'd like to get to 90+, but I only have a limited number of days to work with.

I will be putting at much focus as I can on this over the next 12 days. Each day's progress should be interesting! Right now, I'd rate my confidence as a 1.

5/21/10 - T minus 14

Wow - I've put in more hours this week than in any other week so far! Perhaps even more impressive than that, I think it is pretty much 100% certain that I will fail in 2 weeks.

I have the discrete probability material down cold, but that is only 20-30% of the exam. The continuous probability material is giving me fits. I just can't seem to get my head wrapped around it, and I don't see getting it all in 2 weeks. I am going to put a ton of time and and really try to get there, but I just can't see it coming together in 2 weeks. I can't really even identify a specific problem area, anything beyond the most basic integrals and derivatives just seems to go to mush in my head.

More to come...

5/14 - T minus 21

I did two more practice exams during the week, for a total of 3. In each one, I got all the pure probability questions fairly easily, which ends up being 20-25% of the total # of questions. For the remaining questions, I have the basic idea on most of them, but don't quite have the formulas memorized. I am finding I can do a few more once I look up formulas, but I often have an easy mistake in the math somewhere that I don't find once I struggle with it for a bit.

As I review each practice exam, I have a system for note taking that helps me highlight the specific things I need to learn from that question - both the logic and strategy involved, as well as any formulas I need to learn. I am then summarizing that data on a sheet which shows me the items I need to learn, and I make specific notes on that sheet which have the exact things I need from those notes, whether it be the process for that type of question, the formulas, etc.

I found that towards the end of the 3rd exam I was really starting to build some muscle as far as my ability to work the questions. I was finally able to get a fair way through on some questions I had no idea on before. Hopefully 3 more weeks of this will get me there in time!

My confidence has wavered quite a bit this week. I will put it at 1.5 right now.

5/10 - T minus 25

I finished the new material last week, and started a quick overview of what I learned so far.

I took most of Saturday and Sunday off, only spending a little bit of time on the material. It was good to take a break and remember what "normal" is for my free time, and hopefully that can recharge me for the next few weeks while I try to peak at the right time.

I did a practice exam today - well, since I did it during lunch I didn't spend the 3 hours, but I really didn't need to. There were only 7 questions I got right, and maybe 10 questions I knew how to start. That is what I expected, I still have a lot of formulas to memorize. I thought this would be good to get a feel for exactly where I am, and I will review the rest of the questions I didn't know how to do off the top of my head tonight.

My confidence right now is at a 2. I'm not feeling frustrated or beaten down at the moment, but am hopeful I can solidify the knowledge in the next 3 weeks!

5/4/10 - T minus 31

I have been continuing to work on joint distributions, and am feeling similar frustration as I was feeling when working on continuous distributions two weeks ago. I can see how everything works once it is shown to me, but I don't feel like I am anywhere near being able to just run through this work myself.

I am going to focus on the sample SOA exam problems for joint distributions as I continue to work through the material this week. Hopefully by studying the types of problems that will be on the exam I can get a feel as to where I need to get with the topic, and solidify my understanding in the meantime.

Confidence level is at a 1 currently.