Part 9 Passmark

[NY_Seahawk]

Anyone want to take a guess at what it was?

According to my analysis the least I possibly could have gotten was 59.75 (I got a five). Goes right along with my minimum of 64 on part 8 (I got a five).

Was this part 9 that much easier then the past? I thought the multiple choice was easier, the essays were pretty difficult and overall the test was on par with most of the past exams.

Looks like 400 more hours of studying for me next year.
:viola:

[GefilteFish144]

Seems to me it was an unusually high pass mark as well. I thought I was fairly close and ended up with a 3. A quick look at my analysis showed that the graders may have been stingy with partial credit for wrong answers. I spent more than 10 minutes working out that awful minimum bias problem and still got less than 25%.

[NY_Seahawk]

Speaking of stingy partial credit. I got 0-25% on that 3 pointer asking which experience rating plan worked the best. This was 25% - 50% of the mean score. Seems kind of low considering the question didn't have a quote from the book as the answer and you could probably answer it a few different ways. Interested to see the model solutions to understand what they were looking for.

[BA35]

Hasn't anyone gotten their scores yet? the number of posts here is really small.

I got a 5 and figure my minimum score was 61.125. so the passmark was higher.

[Me3]

I got a 5 and, although it doesn't add much after noting that BA35's 61.125+ was also a 5, my minimum score was 59.875.

Right now, I'm waiting for the model essay solutions to be made available so that I can see what, if anything, I could appeal. (I have already noted the questions that I think they messed up, but the actual appeal will depend on whether or not my methods/solutions are listed in the model answers.)

Also. not much solace in the fact that my 59.875+ would have passed me in 8 out of the last 9 years (all but 2002).

[Lucy]

How can you guys be so sure of your "minimum score"? I spoke with an ex-exam chair once about appeals, and he told me a large fraction of appeals were from people who wrote "I answered XXXX, why didn't I get more credit?", yet when he looked at their work, they had not answered XXXX, but something less complete or less correct.

(I have often thought that satisfaction with the process would be higher if candidates could get their own papers back to see how bad their answers were, but it would be a logistical nightmare.)

I know that when I sat for the reserving exam, I knew the material pretty well. Yet as I was reviewing my work in the last few minutes, I found a question where I had plugged the wrong number into an equation, and the answer was garbage. My "thought error" had been simply plucking the wrong number from the work further up the page, but there was no way a grader could have guessed that. It looked like I had no idea what I was doing, and was just plugging away at random. I'm sure had I not corrected it, I would have gotten little or no credit, yet I was sure I had done it correctly. I barely passed that exam (information sometimes leaks out) and I wonder how many other totally stupid errors my paper contained.

[Klaymen]

How can you guys be so sure of your "minimum score"?

Because CAS candidates getting a high failing score receive an analysis that gives a narrow range of the points they received for each question.

If the question was worth 3 pts and someone scored between 50-74%, he earned between 1.5 and 2.2. Add to this the fact that:
1) If you skipped a question, you know you get a zero.
2) If you answered a question correctly, you often know that you got full credit.
3) In the case of list questions or questions split into parts, you may know how much credit you earned.
4) MC questions which are about 1/5 of the test can be scored exactly (ignoring appeals).

[tommie frazier]

also, you can write an outline of what you did in the exam booklet, and mail it back to yourself. so you can check answers vs papers or other exam takers.

[Lucy]

also, you can write an outline of what you did in the exam booklet, and mail it back to yourself. so you can check answers vs papers or other exam takers.

This doesn't work, for the reasons I stated. But if folks already have the analysis that says "25-50%" I guess you can get a pretty tight range. They didn't give quite so much info so quickly back when I was taking them - I forgot about that.

[RM]

Hmm!

The pass mark was 65.75%. I am so glad that I passed part 9 in October. It seems that the quality of the candidates is getting better and better.

[GefilteFish144]

Definitely -- I've never seen this kind of demand for jobs in the profession. Been like this since the tech bubble burst. Also seeing a lot more people who get through their exams in less than 5 years. I know I may be profiling here, but many of these people seem to be from China.

[Penelope]

The quality of actuarial candidates is much better recently. And yes, part of the reason is that people are coming to the US to find jobs.

Also, I think the exam questions are getting more straight forward. The CAS has done a much better job testing knowledge on recent exams, IMO. I got a 5 on part 9 last year. I can tell you that I felt the exam was very straight forward, but very long. There were questions that I knew how to answer, but I ran out of time. This year, I will have to write faster.

Also, IMO, the higher pass marks that we are seeing is a good thing. It is embarassing for the CAS to give an exam, and have the pass mark be in the 50's. Personally, I would like to see the passmark be around 70. This can only be accomplished with better exams, and I think the CAS is moving in that direction.

[Colymbosathon ecplecticos]

Definitely -- I've never seen this kind of demand for jobs in the profession. Been like this since the tech bubble burst. Also seeing a lot more people who get through their exams in less than 5 years. I know I may be profiling here, but many of these people seem to be from China.

Let's see. GF144 takes exam X once a year for five years (or more?) and finally passes it. During that time he sees new people enter the profession and finish all of their exams. His conclusion: "They seem to be from China."

[GefilteFish144]

Let's see. GF144 takes exam X once a year for five years (or more?) and finally passes it. During that time he sees new people enter the profession and finish all of their exams. His conclusion: "They seem to be from China."

Let's see. GF144 looks up "Colymbosathon ecplecticos" on Google. He finds this link:

http://pretendingalong.smorgasblog.com/archives/000157.html

His conclusion: IN YOUR DREAMS, BUDDY!

[GefilteFish144]

Let's see. GF144 takes exam X once a year for five years (or more?) and finally passes it. During that time he sees new people enter the profession and finish all of their exams. His conclusion: "They seem to be from China."

And I actually reached this conclusion from talking to people, not simply by observation. If you had any social skills, you would understand....

[Colymbosathon ecplecticos]

Oh I think I understand; there are bigots all over.

[GefilteFish144]

Oh I think I understand; there are bigots all over.

You obviously don't; there are big idiots all over.