Need Advice

[BAIINinja]

Thats the issue, the "material" portion of ASM for P is like 100 pages....very short and concise, also the practice exams range from hard to near impossible.

[Burhan]

Originally Posted by BAIINinja

Thats the issue, the "material" portion of ASM for P is like 100 pages....very short and concise, also the practice exams range from hard to near impossible.

Then what do you suggest BAIINinja??

A good prob book? which one?

[BAIINinja]

What kind of learner are you? Do you learn by doing more and more problems? or do you need instruction (like a college course)? Do you learn by learning theory? are you ok with abridged learning styles(ie cliff notes type learning) or do you need to know all derivation and things that are very thorough? Do you get discouraged when doing problems that are obviously harder than the exam, or do you need more of a equal difficulty so you dont get discouraged?

The reason I ask is the following:

If you like personal instruction, and many problems.....do TIA
If you like theory but dislike abrideged instruction use the text
If you like abridged instruction, theory and impossible problems use ASM
If you want to be hand fed the instruction but will have to look for harder problems elsewhere use Actex
If you like shortcuts, and dont mind less problems use Guo.
If you just want a lot of problems and a littel feedback use ADAPT.

I personally recommend anything that says ASM or TIA on it.

[boringCatwoman]

I did not see this in the discussion but make sure you are easily able to complete 95-100% of the practice problems on the SOA website. For the preliminaries I cannot stress this enough. I did this for all the preliminaries and would have regretted if I did not.

[TheGillotine]

Yeah, referring to the OP, there's no way you should move on to the harder exams if you can't pass P. The exams are there for a reason, and if you can't pass P on this next try, I'd ask that you be honest and rethink if this is the field for you. It does not get easier after P.

[BAIINinja]

I think it does. After you learn what study method works the exams are not bad. TheGillotine must be one of those that think that you have to be a genius to pass these things...

[trogdor_the_burninator]

Originally Posted by BAIINinja

If you like personal instruction, and many problems.....do TIA
If you like theory but dislike abrideged instruction use the text
If you like abridged instruction, theory and impossible problems use ASM
If you want to be hand fed the instruction but will have to look for harder problems elsewhere use Actex
If you like shortcuts, and dont mind less problems use Guo.
If you just want a lot of problems and a littel feedback use ADAPT.

I personally recommend anything that says ASM or TIA on it.

I would listen to this guy. For me, I failed P once then passed it using TIA. At first I used Actex and it just didnt suit me right. I turned to TIA and never looked back. I really dislike probability and TIA really helped me learn it. That's just my two cents. Use TIA and do the ASM practice exams for 3 weeks everyday before the exam and you should be set.

Trogdor

[mathmajor]

ASM manuals have helped me pass five out of five exam attempts. I highly recommend them. I've been lucky in that I've always had good intuition for math exams and multiple choice exams.

I have a co-worker that took three attempts on FM and was getting really frustrated. But she learned how to study effectively and really improved, passing MLC in two and C in one. Those "harder" exams got easier by studying well.

[Edin]

Burhan, not sure if you still here, I joined just to post on this thread. IF this is really what you want to do, DO NOT GIVE UP! I don't care what anyone says. I've been knocked down more often than not by these exams and each time I brush myself off and get back up. I had trouble passing FM(yea) and C, but I never quit. I went to Actuary. If I can do it, anyone can.

[kkuo]

Yeah guys I still need some help. I spent a long time studying for P and FM and although I got through them I thought they were extremely tough and I got through by sheer willpower. I'm still tentative on whether to continue on to MLC because I've heard it's gotten harder now.

Any tips to get through the material faster? I spent several hundreds of hours on P and FM. I used TIA for P and Guo for FM. I haven't used ASM and I felt TIA was confusing at times for P despite the high praise it's gotten. I also like to mention I started this field with just some high school adv calculus.