Emergency: July P/1 2010

[ododyppah]

I am new to actuarial and I am going to have my first actuarial exam this month. I carefully go over every sample questions posted by SOA. But still, I feel it not enough because too many people told me that the real exam is actually harder than sample questions. I doubt if it is the truth?? really nervous now.:shocked:

[Dance!]

i think that if you can work out the sample problems w/ relative ease then you should be able to pass. on the exam you'll get easy questions that are much easier than any of the sample questions, but you'll also get hard questions that won't look like anything you've ever done. it has been my experience that you mostly get easy to moderately hard questions since the purpose of the exam, imo, is to test that you actually know something, and not to determine whether you're a genius or not.

good luck to you! :smiloe:

[ododyppah]

i think that if you can work out the sample problems w/ relative ease then you should be able to pass. on the exam you'll get easy questions that are much easier than any of the sample questions, but you'll also get hard questions that won't look like anything you've ever done. it has been my experience that you mostly get easy to moderately hard questions since the purpose of the exam, imo, is to test that you actually know something, and not to determine whether you're a genius or not.

good luck to you! :smiloe:

thanks a lot. i dont know if 143 sample questions cover everything that i need to know to take the exam.:shocked:

[highfiver]

I too am wondering about what the original poster asked. I have only studied the SOA questions which I know completely--I have no problems answering any of those questions. Is that sufficient? I had heard that it is possible to pass the exam without spending any money, that you could just study those questions and be fine, but at the same time looking at a lot of these questions on this discussion board I'm getting worried--I can sometimes solve them, but they don't seem anywhere near as easy as the ones in the SOA packet.

So I'm asking two things--is studying just those questions going to be sufficient? And do most people agree with the second poster in regards to the difficulty of the questions? Should the difficulty be on par with the questions provided by the SOA?

I'm taking the exam in 1 week so maybe its a little late to be worrying about this haha but any advice would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks!

[Coolguy]

I too am wondering about what the original poster asked. I have only studied the SOA questions which I know completely--I have no problems answering any of those questions. Is that sufficient? I had heard that it is possible to pass the exam without spending any money, that you could just study those questions and be fine, but at the same time looking at a lot of these questions on this discussion board I'm getting worried--I can sometimes solve them, but they don't seem anywhere near as easy as the ones in the SOA packet.

So I'm asking two things--is studying just those questions going to be sufficient? And do most people agree with the second poster in regards to the difficulty of the questions? Should the difficulty be on par with the questions provided by the SOA?

I'm taking the exam in 1 week so maybe its a little late to be worrying about this haha but any advice would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks!

That depends.....do you know the answers because you have gone through the questions so many times taht you have the solutions memorized? Or does your understanding go deeper as to why the solutions are what they are? If you understand the concepts, and have the distributions down, you are probably ready. There are a number of different practice exams online for free. See how you do on those.

[drcroc]

Hi

I'm taking 1P July also. I've been studying for a while, from a manual. It's the Dr. O manual so from what I can gather some of the examples are more difficult than what will be on the exam. This makes sense because some of his written solutions would take me quite a while to not only figure out but also write to completion. Basically I think we're all in the same boat of be able to do some problems, with others being difficult in their nit-pickiness.

I'm still nervous though! Good luck to you.

mdv

[drcroc]

I just took it and failed.

I studied for 100+ hours from the ASM Manual and have a BS in Math with Probability coursework.

It wasn't as easy as I thought it might be. I don't know if I'll take it again or not.

[borobuckeye]

So did you feel that you weren't ready? Was what you studied not on it? Or were the questions much more difficult than you expected?

[kryptic91]

Hey guys, I was just wondering does anybody know what we should and shouldn't bring to the exam? I feel like I saw this info online a while ago but I can't seem to find it. Also, I was wondering if anyone has any kind of general tips for someone taking the exam for the first time?

By the way, good luck to everyone!

EDIT: Never mind, I found it and will post it here in case anyone else is looking for it: http://www.soa.org/files/pdf/edu-rul...structions.pdf

[drcroc]

So did you feel that you weren't ready? Was what you studied not on it? Or were the questions much more difficult than you expected?

l felt ready going in...but also didn't know what to expect

I think I studied too many problems that were too difficult and not enough easy ones, however.