Please offer me advice

[wils0522]

Hi,

I have just completed the FM exam and will begin my studying for the CAS Exam 3 soon. I am a little worried, because I am not as familiar with the casact.org website as I am with SOA's website. It seems to be a little more difficult to find the info I am looking for.

I guess what I am asking is for any advice any of you may have for me. I am not sure what study material, books, etc, that I should purchase. I prefer to be as prepared as possible (I'd rather over study than have to restudy). Please give me all and any advice any of you may have for me. ANY INPUT IS SO APPRECIATED!!! Also, just a basic summary of what I should focus on will probably help my comfort level

Thank you for everyone's time and consideration,

Amber
wils0522@umn.edu

[Didon]

I agree, it used to take me five minutes of clicking around to find stuff before I got used to the CAS site. This page tells you pretty much everything you need to know about content:
http://www.casact.com/admissions/syllabus/2005/exam3.htm
I'll let someone else talk about life con (that's the stuff from the Bowers textbook). But for the rest of the exam, my recommendation is to skip the textbooks and just get Mahler's study guides. If it were just me, I wouldn't recommend dissing the textbooks, but it seems that almost everyone finds Mahler sufficient for the non-life-con parts of the syllabus. It's expensive but totally worth it. (I'd tell you how to order them but I think that's against the rules of this site.)

As for what to focus on, I'd say don't get sucked into worrying about life con. For me, reading posts on the SOA M forum sort of psyched me out into thinking it was more important than it really was. For SOA M, the test seems to have become a game of trying to think of the nastiest, trickiest life con questions possible. For CAS 3, as Abraham Weishaus likes to say, often the life con problems can be solved by a high school student. So learn the material but don't spend a whole lot of time on it.

[Sox34]

Well, for starters, you should look at the syllabus summary on the cas website for CAS 3

http://www.casact.org/admissions/syllabus/2005/exam3.htm

to see what the textbooks are etc. In terms of study manuals I would definitely suggest Mahler for all the non-life material. That manual is great. It is very thorough and is very easy to follow. If you are going to buy all the textbooks, I would suggest getting the Arch manual because it is a great companion to the texts. You probably could use Arch as well without the texts, but personally I used it with the texts.

If you can go to a seminar I can't say enough how great Batten is for life con. I would attend either NEAS or MAF which is Mahler and Batten. The two of them are great - and by signing up for NEAS or MAF you get the Mahler guides for free.

That is my two cents. Hopefully this helps.

[2M]

It takes a little getting used to but, I personally think the CAS site is easier to get around in than the SOA site

[2M]

I agree with the above posts. Mahler study guides for non-life material are excellent. Problem is there is no life material

Might check out other study guides that would provide a comprehensive look at the whole syllabus, depending on the financial resources you have available of course (BPP and Arch are a couple that come to ind)

[radix]

Hi,

I have just completed the FM exam and will begin my studying for the CAS Exam 3 soon. I am a little worried, because I am not as familiar with the casact.org website as I am with SOA's website. It seems to be a little more difficult to find the info I am looking for.

I guess what I am asking is for any advice any of you may have for me. I am not sure what study material, books, etc, that I should purchase. I prefer to be as prepared as possible (I'd rather over study than have to restudy). Please give me all and any advice any of you may have for me. ANY INPUT IS SO APPRECIATED!!! Also, just a basic summary of what I should focus on will probably help my comfort level

Thank you for everyone's time and consideration,

Amber
wils0522@umn.edu

Take SOA M, because both CAS and SOA accept that one.

[2M]

Or, depending on your resources, you could take both. Some people do it as two chances to get one exam.

Note: The syllabus of the two exams have differences