I failed

[khachikp86]

so many topics not addressed, so many topics too heavily emphasized with more detail than I was used to.

[wallnflowers]

AGREED.

[Wolf Follower]

I agree. And to that I'll add that I thought some of the questions were either really bizarre or deliberately ambiguous. And yet, some of them were super-easy.

WF

[khachikp86]

Originally Posted by Wolf Follower

I agree. And to that I'll add that I thought some of the questions were either really bizarre or deliberately ambiguous. And yet, some of them were super-easy.

WF

yes I agree. Some questions were so poorly worded it would be an accomplishment just to figure out what it's trying to say much less answer the damn question. Also, whereas the practice exams featured 1 or maybe 2 unknown or ambiguous variables, some questions had up to 3 or 4. Yet some were on the same difficulty level as "what's a call option?" (note: this was not on my test)

I registered for the last possible day. My particular exam was extremely brutal and I feel they make it harder as the days go as they assume people talk about the kinds of questions regardless of agreeing not to. Next time i'm taking the FIRST DAY FIRST HOUR!!!

[Force of Interest]

Originally Posted by khachikp86

I registered for the last possible day. My particular exam was extremely brutal and I feel they make it harder as the days go as they assume people talk about the kinds of questions regardless of agreeing not to. Next time i'm taking the FIRST DAY FIRST HOUR!!!

haha i love conspiracy talk. I'm pretty sure its all just one huge bank and they randomly pick questions for each person that sits down. Questions are calibrated by their difficulty and each exam is supposed to be comparable in overall difficulty.

Good luck next time guys, at least you can retake it in Feb, unlike a couple years ago.

[Wolf Follower]

Originally Posted by khachikp86

I registered for the last possible day. My particular exam was extremely brutal and I feel they make it harder as the days go as they assume people talk about the kinds of questions regardless of agreeing not to. Next time i'm taking the FIRST DAY FIRST HOUR!!!

Well, I took P on the first day of the exam session and felt the same way about it. Actually I passed both of them so I guess I shouldn't complain too much; I just didn't feel like either one was well-assembled and wanted to vent.

WF

[rawrster]

yeah..im under the assumption its one large bank and randomly chosen

i remember taking it a previous sitting and after the exam me and my friend were talking about it afterwards and he didnt have some of my questions and vice versa.

[ndruo]

I failed too.

It is a question bank, and it is randomly chosen.

Blaming the test won't help anyone, most importantly ourselves. There's only one reason people fail these exams: absence of mastery of the material.

If you know your stuff, then you have sufficient information to solve everything.

I had this presumption that I was such hot @#%$ with interest rates, annuities, bonds, and amortization that I was like "Oh, well if I'm this good at the interest theory stuff, I can ignore DM."

Bzzt. Wrong. Those four or five points might have pushed me over the edge to a passing grade.

No more slacking, everyone. Nobody's gonna "scrape by" on this, or any other actuarial exam. Mastery of the material means mastery of ALL of the material. Presumably, all of us already gone through the lecture/theory portions of your test prep materials. Start cracking on every. single. practice problem.

Right now. And you do them over and over until you get them all right. See you next year.

[jressler]

Originally Posted by ndruo

I had this presumption that I was such hot @#%$ with interest rates, annuities, bonds, and amortization that I was like "Oh, well if I'm this good at the interest theory stuff, I can ignore DM."

I don't understand why people always want to skip the DM portion. It is not particularly difficult... especially the questions they choose to put on the exam (at least when I took it more than half were no-brainers if you at least skimmed the material).

[jprep]

Originally Posted by khachikp86

so many topics not addressed, so many topics too heavily emphasized with more detail than I was used to.

I'm sorry to hear that khachikp! I felt the same way... I had more questions on exact matching than I was expecting. Compared to their past exams, they put a lot more easy-gimme type problems, but also a lot more of those confusing-wording problems that lack clarity. P is the same way.

I always love it when I can do sample exams without much confusion... and then on the actual exam, look at the first few questions and wonder how in the world to solve them. If this is the way they word the questions for P and FM, then I can't imagine how they'll word the questions for the next exams.

Good luck in February. Now you know what the exam questions look like, and can gain an edge for a future sitting!