Disqualification letter from SOA

[Dr T Non-Fan]

For Course 1-4, you put an answer down and it's either right or wrong. Mr. White's example above sounds more like a WA situation.
I would even speculate that all the scores in a small neighborhood of the pass mark are sent through the machine one last time. It can't possibly take long to double-check some 300 exams at 50 per minute (my estimate).

All the questions have been available for review by the whole actuarial community. Any unusual issues with the questions have been discussed and rectified.

I know of a person who misaligned his answers and questions -- he skipped an early question, but not the answer. This guy was so sure he did well, only to get a 0 or 1. He had to take it over again. It was old Course 150.

I have no evidence that *screams* cover up. I do find it strange that nothing was said to the candidate before he appealed. When he appealed, he was told that he was not the only candidate that this happened to for that exam for that sitting. Perhaps bad communication is the problem here.

On 2002-01-08 00:04, Dr T Non-Fan wrote:
I know of a person who misaligned his answers and questions -- he skipped an early question, but not the answer. This guy was so sure he did well, only to get a 0 or 1. He had to take it over again. It was old Course 150.

I know of someone who had a similar problem, except her exam booklet was missing question #3, and she didn't realize it until "pencils down", so all her answers were off by one. The SOA's response was "the proctor had extra exam booklets. you should have asked for 1"...after haranguing, they agreed to refund her exam fee, and she had to retake it.

Lesson learned: check that you have all the pages as soon as they say "go", and always check that you're filling in the answer on the correct line.

[jedekiah]

The following, I swear, is a true story:

When I took the SAT in the spring of my junior year in high school, I made a similar gaff - one math section had 30 questions, then the subsequent section was verbal with 55 questions. I did questions 1-30 and 46-55 first, saving the reading comprehension questions (31-45) for last, but accidentally answered questions 31-45 in the ovals at the end of the previous math section. So when my answer sheet was scanned in, it read questions 31-45 as being omitted, and there were 15 filled-in ovals for non-existent math questions in that previous section.

I received the answer sheet back and immedately discovered what had happened. 14 of the 15 questions I had misplaced were correct. I wrote Educational Testing Service and explained all this, trying to convince them that I clearly had meant to fill in the ovals in the verbal section, since questions 31-45 on the previous math section didn't exist. But I didn't really expect them to do anything, and I was fully prepared to take the test again the following fall.

And guess what? They counted my answers! Even though the SAT has tens of thousands, maybe more, test-takers, ETS cared enough to review my individual case and use logical common sense to give me credit where credit was due. Thus, it pains me to hear that the SOA, a much, much, smaller organization, can't do the same when someone does something like transpose all the answers one bubble up when there wasn't even a question #3 in their booklet. The mistake I made on the SAT was largely my fault, but they gave me credit anyway, because they discovered my true intentions by examining the case. The mistake on the actuarial exam noted in the posting above wasn't even the student's fault, and yet the SOA still wouldn't give her credit.

This is what I meant by opening up this can of worms. It just seems that they are so hung up on procedure that they are unwilling to bend when unusual circumstances may force them to change their procedure, even when doing so is clearly the humane thing to do.

[The Drunken Actuary]

SOA has no competition. If stories like your about the SAT kept cropping up, people might start taking the ACT, or worse yet, people might abandon standardized tests altoghether, if the results weren't reliable. That's just my theory anyway. Please don't take the above comments as confrontational.

[Griffin 1]

On 2002-01-09 08:14, TDA wrote:
SOA has no competition.

They have plenty of competition. Or did you think that being an Actuary is the only thing a Math major can do?

[Actuary321]

On 2002-01-09 08:41, Griffin wrote:

They have plenty of competition. Or did you think that being an Actuary is the only thing a Math major can do?

Exactly, think "Big Tent".

[The Drunken Actuary]

On 2002-01-09 08:41, Griffin wrote:

They have plenty of competition.

Who else offers exams that will allow you to become a life actuary?

This is what I meant by opening up this can of worms. It just seems that they are so hung up on procedure that they are unwilling to bend when unusual circumstances may force them to change their procedure, even when doing so is clearly the humane thing to do.

"Wherever there is centralisation there is stupidity." Amen.

[Griffin 1]

On 2002-01-09 10:57, TDA wrote:
Who else offers exams that will allow you to become a life actuary?

Think a little more broadly.