how to pass exam 5

[slk]

i am planning to take exam 5 this coming spring

would appreciate if those who already passed would share
techniques they used to pass exam 5

thanks in advance

[Examinator]

I'm in the same boat - taking 5 for the first time. I've downloaded all available readings and plan to start looking things over on Monday. Hopefully it's a little better mountain to climb than 6 was.

[Maine-iac]

Well, this helped me. YMMV

1. Read the material over once for sense before really diving into it. But don't spend too much time on this.
2. Writing up an outline of the material will help you retain it, but can be a major time waster if you are not careful about it. I rarely used the outlines I wrote, but just writing them fixed things in my head.
3. The pricing section needs the bulk of your time, and the more practice problems you can do the better off you will be.
4. However, do not underestimate the list-heavy "Intro to P&C Insurance" part. It is not difficult, but it is filled with detail that you need to retain and if you don't devote time to it because you are working too many pricing problems you will not be able to dredge it up for the exams. This section is very amenable to flash cards, cassete tapes of key points that you play in your car, etc. It's rote, but it has to be done.
5. Track your hours carefully. You need at least 300 hours and it is very easy to mis-estimate the amount of time you have spent on this exam.
6. I had good luck with the All-10 manual.

Good luck. I passed it on the first try, and you can too.

[Tex Act]

Here's the simple and easy plan to passing course 5: study your tail off.

There are no tricks to passing exams 5 through 9. It takes putting in your time.

[Avi]

What worked for me was to make index cards for the Insurance/Coverage issues, and constantly flip through them at the oddest times.

The pricing/ratemaking material just takes doing problem, after problem, after problem. After you do a few hundred problems, you will remember which method needs an off-balance correction, which method doesn't etc.

Unfortunately, there are no "tricks." As my boss likes to say, Exams 1-4 was undergrad. Welcome to grad school. There are no "nice" textbooks; no straightforward syllabi. You have to read the papers--I find that a study manual helps, somewhat, to explain difficult issues, but nowhere near the level of help it gave for Exam 1-4.

Spend the hours! If I failed exam 6 this sitting, I KNOW that 25-50 more hours would have allowed me to pass. Structure your time! Make a schedule and stick to it. I find using a spreadsheet to keep track of my time helpful (I keep it on my PDA).

Ask questions!

Use this board.
Use caslist http://www.casact.org/admissions/studygroups.cfm
If you go to a seminar, email the instructor.

I recommend Mahler/Feldblum

Feldblum gets a bit easier to understand as you progress; he also is the author of a number of the papers.

Mahler is very clear.

They both give voluminous and excellent notes (Feldblum's may be too informative at times :) )

Oh, and did I say, STUDY, STUDY, STUDY.

Good Luck!

[Macavity]

You guys are right. Grad school though? I'd say exams 5-9 are more like training for the National Spelling Bee. Very little creative genius required and almost ALL gut wrenching, monotonous memorization. Yeah, there's a little bit of problem solving but no where near the amount you'd see on exam 3. The key to these cursed upper level exams is simply to put the time in and read, memorize, practice, over and over and over again. That's the only challenge: to put in 300 hours without going insane from boredem.

[Avi]

I'm in Reinsurance, so 6 wasn't so bad. It would be tragically poetic if it would be the first exam I fail :(

[Plant Food]

Don't listen to that "grad school" stuff. The material on Exam 5 isn't any harder than exams 1-4 but you will need to get used to the writing styles and the fact that none of the papers were written in a way that facilitates learning.
Make sure that you can do every computational problem from the old exams. Get a firm grasp of what would be considered routine material so that it's routine on the exam.

[Avi]

Don't listen to that "grad school" stuff. The material on Exam 5 isn't any harder than exams 1-4 but you will need to get used to the writing styles and the fact that none of the papers were written in a way that facilitates learning.

/sigh

That's what I meant. No nice textbooks, no straightforward syllabus, more "self-teaching" the way that undergrad has teachers that put thematerial in front of you but more research and self-teaching are required in grad school.

[StuckInMud]

Which papers are the best ones to start with?

Which ones carry the bulk of the testable material?

Which manuals are any good? (Mahler? All10? Anything else out there?)

[isaac218]

At the Mahler/Feldblum seminar for exam 5 do they send you notes? I heard that for Mahler's seminars for 3 & 4 he gives a large pack of notes that are very helpful and I was wondering if it was the same for exam 5.

Thanks

[MountainHawk]

Don't be intimidated by the Feldblum tome on WC Ratemaking either. It's fairly straightforward stuff. It's long, but he repeats himself quite a bit. Just make sure you can do the calculations from beginning to end, and go from there. There will be a bunch of points on the exam from that paper, and people see the thickness and overthink it.

[Utanapishtim]

At the Mahler/Feldblum seminar for exam 5 do they send you notes? I heard that for Mahler's seminars for 3 & 4 he gives a large pack of notes that are very helpful and I was wondering if it was the same for exam 5.

The NEAS seminars send notes, supposedly. Last year Mahler's notes were sent while Feldblum's weren't ready until the days of his seminars themselves, in actuality. These notes can be a useful supplement to the articles, but are not a substitute for having read the articles themselves, which you should really have done before attending a seminar, anyway.

[Howard Mahler]

My Part 5 Study Aids are at NEAS and will be mailed upon registration for the seminar. They have been expanded again this year, to about 645 pages. (This is my third year teaching Part 5.)
They are a supplement rather than a replacement to the readings.

New England Actuarial Seminars Part 5 Seminars:
4 and a half days.
Taught by Sholom Feldblum (2 days) and Howard Mahler (2.5 days).
Rosemont, Illinois (Outside Chicago): March 17-21, 2005.
Iselin, New Jersey: March 20-24, 2005.

Howard Mahler

P.S. I do not know when Sholom's notes will be available. Unlike me, he has a full time job at an Insurance Company.


At the Mahler/Feldblum seminar for exam 5 do they send you notes? I heard that for Mahler's seminars for 3 & 4 he gives a large pack of notes that are very helpful and I was wondering if it was the same for exam 5.

Thanks

[Lucy]

This exam is mostly in two parts.

One part is "introduction to P&C" and it is mostly memorization. On the plus side, it's pulled from the CPCU syllabus, and they are a big enough organization that they have a series of textbooks. It's easy, but voluminous, and requires a lot of memorization. Plan to use whatever method you use to memorize facts.

The second part is basic ratemaking. This is P&C actuarial stuff, and there's not a textbook. The syllabus is a mix of "original" articles introducing ideas, and study notes written for students that cover major topics, such as the Graves paper or the Feldblum tome. Some of this needs to be memorized, and some can be understood. For instance, once you get grounded in this stuff, you can usually figure out on your own if you will need an off-balance. You may as well plan on some memorization, but if you understand where and why you will be off-balancing, it will make it easier. Similarly, at first I was confused by when to use historical data and when current, until I realized that the general method is to attempt to predict the future by looking at averages from past data (to get stuff that's somewhat developed and credible) and then weight it on projections of the future mix, which might just be the most recent mix of classes, or whatever looks like the best predictor of future mix. So I found the second part a little easier than the first, after I wrapped my head around it.

I started by reading all the articles once. But I didn't really get the ratemaking, and found it confusing. About half way through my "read", I got frustrated and looked at some old exams. I found that this helped focus my thinking. I also found that I could do about a quarter of the ratemaking problems from first principles, without having done the reading, which I found reassuring. Then I finished my read-through and went back and did problems. For the ratemaking material, definitely count on doing lots of practice problems. Fortunately, the old exams provide a wealth of example problems. I liked the organization of Casualty Study Manuals, but I sat for this exam before All 10 was published, so I have no opinion on it. (The author sat for this material a year after I did)

[Wigmeister General]

Which papers are the best ones to start with?

Which ones carry the bulk of the testable material?

Which manuals are any good? (Mahler? All10? Anything else out there?)

Either choose a study manual, and follow its order, or use the CAS order.

[joeorez]

I am an FCAS and I have a Master's in Math.

For my Master's I had to take a comprehensive oral exam on anything in the courses I took for the Master's. The professors would ask a question, and then probe and probe until I reached a point of my not understanding what I was talking about.

I don't consider actuarial exams easy, but I maintain that this Master's oral exam was the most difficult exam I have ever taken.

[StuckInMud]

I can see that there is no "Bama Gambler style: how to pass this course" outline that can be written for this exam. Shame. Those papers are mighty boring.