Complete beginner - what do I need?

[amujee]

I'm ready to make a career change.
It's been several years since college. I took calculus but I've never taken a probability class. What do I need to study to take (and pass) this first exam? I was going to just get a study manual, but I feel like I need to take classes or something. I don't want to just learn how to pass the exam, I want to know what I'm doing if I get a a job.
Do I have a chance? I've done IT work in the past and now I work for state disability services.

Thanks.

[Ken]

At work, you'll be playing with Excel. Depending on your background, you might get more exposure to VBA and SAS. Exams build fundamentals, but I wouldn't say they're necessary to accomplishing your day to day work. Honestly, I don't think you can learn much more from a class than sitting down and learning from a good text book. Introductory to multivariate calculus is the only actuarial topic that I would recommend taking a class on if you haven't already done so.

[dip_cool]

i went through multi variate calculus from MIT open course ware [url]http://search.mit.edu/search?site=ocw&client=mit&getfields=*&output=xml_ no_dtd&proxystylesheet=http%3A%2F%2Focw.mit.edu%2F search%2Fgoogle-ocw.xsl&proxyreload=1&as_dt=i&oe=utf-8&departmentName=web&filter=0&courseName=&q=multiv ariate+calculus&btnG.x=0&btnG.y=0[/url] helped me lot during my paper of probability.