Historical Pass Marks for C/4

[oldman_crying]

It will be interesting to see what the passing percentage was based on the difficulty of the Nov '08 exam. The information below was tabulated from the SOA pdf and I estimated what Nov '08 from recent historical trends. If any one has May '08 data, please submit a posting.

Date N Effective Passing Passing% Eff Passing%
Nov-08 1911 * 1826 * 769 40.2% 42.1%
May-08
Nov-07 1857 1786 926 49.9% 51.8%
May-07 2079 1975 887 42.7% 44.9%
Nov-06 2050 1950 1157 56.4% 59.3%
May-06 2119 2016 1128 53.2% 56.0%
Nov-05 1785 1715 904 50.6% 52.7%
May-05 1573 1511 831 52.8% 55.0%
Nov-04 2006 1915 1032 51.4% 53.9%
May-04 1728 1658 864 50.0% 52.1%
Nov-03 1610 1537 823 51.1% 53.5%
May-03 1215 1184 613 50.5% 51.8%
Nov-02 1283 1226 739 57.6% 60.3%
May-02 1272 1182 564 44.3% 47.7%
Nov-01 1149 1057 491 42.7% 46.5%
May-01 1008 945 409 40.6% 43.3%
Nov-00 963 868 356 37.0% 41.0%
May-00 913 828 309 33.8% 37.3%

* Estimated based on May '05 - Nov '07 statistics

[EaglesFan]

The relevant info is at the bottom:


Page 1
July 25, 2008
MAY 2008 EXAMINATION RESULTS
Administering
Organization:
Society of Actuaries
475 N. Martingale Road,
Suite 600
Schaumburg, IL 60173
U.S.A.
Sponsoring
Organizations:
American Academy of Actuaries
American Society of Pension
Professionals & Actuaries
Canadian Institute of Actuaries
Casualty Actuarial Society
Examinations P/1, FM/2,
MFE/3F, and C/4
Casualty Actuarial Society
4350 N. Fairfax Drive,
Suite 250
Arlington, VA 22203
U.S.A.
Conference of Consulting Actuaries
Joint Board for the Enrollment of
Actuaries
Society of Actuaries
The pass mark, number of candidates writing, the effective number writing (those who
achieved at least 50% of the passing score), the number passing, the percentage passing,
and the percentage effective passing for the respective examinations is as follows:|
EXAMINATIONS P, FM, MFE, MLC, C
Exam
Pass Mark
N
# Effective # Passing
% Passing
% Effective Passing
P
63%*
3321
2902
1158
34.9
39.9
FM
70%*
4847
4481
2357
48.6
52.6
MFE
55%
2641
2401
1277
48.4
53.2
MLC
62%
2494
2306
1186
47.6
51.4


C
60%
1848
1757
868
47.0
49.4

[oldman_crying]

EaglesFan - Thanks for the information.

Factoring in May 2008 data and averaging the N's and Effective N's produced an Eff Pass% of 42.3%

This is all just hypothetical of course, but supports some of the information found in the Pass/Fail & PAK Score thread.

[EaglesFan]

If that holds up, it would be the lowest effective passing in eight years and significantly below the average for that time period.

If so, people who ended up with a 5 (which is quite possible in my case) would have adequate reason to ticked.

[Sarengo]

May '07 was the first of the new syllabus, from which it seems to have just gotten harder and harder. It also doesn't look like it will be getting easier.

[EaglesFan]

May '07 was the first of the new syllabus, from which it seems to have just gotten harder and harder. It also doesn't look like it will be getting easier.



But at least the last two sitting they kept the passing percentage fairly in-line with the historical. I don't think we're going to see that this time.....

[Sarengo]

I definitely agree, and I think this is because the SOA is making passing MFE, MLC, and C quite a bit harder than before. Personally, I think this is because the move to CBT includes offering the exam more times per year, so they don't have to be as worried about people who get a 5 and have to wait 6 more months just to move on. By offering the exam more often, they can be a bit more selective on who they let through each passing without getting into trouble on how long it takes to get through all the exams.

[EaglesFan]

I definitely agree, and I think this is because the SOA is making passing MFE, MLC, and C quite a bit harder than before. Personally, I think this is because the move to CBT includes offering the exam more times per year, so they don't have to be as worried about people who get a 5 and have to wait 6 more months just to move on. By offering the exam more often, they can be a bit more selective on who they let through each passing without getting into trouble on how long it takes to get through all the exams.



All for that! But why take it out on those of us who still have to play the six-month waiting game. I think anyone who pulled a 5 on this exam (and I'll find out Monday if I did), probably would have scored at least a 7 on many of the earlier exams.

[Sarengo]

And the same applies to people who failed last sitting (i.e. me).

Anyway, I imagine the SOA doesn't want a huge PR situation that would require reporting all of its plans to the public, so its not going to go from a 55% passing to 40% (or even 35%) passing exam over one sitting. Doing that goes against everything they say about the exam committee's process, so instead they do it gradually which requires no explanation other than that they're in the process of revising the exam process and converting to CBT.

[Actuarialsuck]

Pass %s have been all over the place quite a few times. When course 2 has under a 30% pass and then FM had more than twice that 2 sittings later? I don't think SOA is concerned with a "PR situation", they don't have to report anything they don't want to. If you want to hear really long rant threads check out CAS 6 and 9 this past sitting.

[Sarengo]

The FM sitting you're referring to was the first FM sitting, and I'm guessing the SOA didn't properly plan the exam. I'm guessing this since the sitting immediately after was significantly harder, and has stayed at that level since.

Historically, the SOA has kept passmarks generally stable and instead seems to focus on writing exams to meet those passmarks. When one sitting of an exam is really hard causing a lower passing percentage, the next sitting has tended to have a higher passing percentage. While the SOA has said on multiple occasions that they do not try to control the number of actuaries, they have said that they are trying to control the length of time it takes to get through the exam process.

I'm now leaning towards the theory that the SOA really does the latter as they say because now that the exams MLC, MFE, and C are transitioning into being offered more times a year, which would reduce the time someone with a 5 needs to wait to progress, the exams are becoming harder and the passing percentages are dropping, and without the typical rebound seen historically.

I would also like to second Actuarialsuck's mentioning that exam C takers don't have the worse end of the stick by pointing people toward the MFE forums for the last two sittings. I luckily passed MFE three sittings ago when it started getting hard but not as ridiculous as it has progressed to.

[Nonpareil]

My guess would be that they are making the problems harder and more complicated because they are building a test bank for CBT. The test bank would presumably be problems lifted verbatim from recent non-released tests, so they don't want those problems leaked before the exam goes CBT. Making questions wordy and complicated is one way to prevent exam takers from remembering the questions in full and reconstructing the exam, helping to maintain the integrity of the test bank. Also, the SOA is probably using the current test takers as guinea pigs, trying out some hard problems that may not make it to CBT, which may be another reason people consider this sitting to be difficult compared to released questions. I didn't take C in the Fall, but I did take (and passed!) MLC, and found the complaints about C to be very similar to my complaints about MLC, in that the questions on the exam were much more complicated than any of the released past exam questions.

[EaglesFan]

So even with lowering the passmark to 22 they STILL had one of the lowest historical passing %s this sitting. Can't say I'm surprised....