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Very good way to put it. Totally felt like the exam was not designed well if they were trying to test students’ knowledge on syllabus material. It was more like, you need to know extra material for one question and you have to get this one calculation problem right or you’re going to be hard pressed to pass.
Setting it up like that while leaving basically everything else of the syllabus material off seems cheap.
Tough exam.
I’m certainly not optimistic about passing. Regarding the values from the table in Q4, I just used the excel function to get the Normal dist values.
A lot of questions threw me off, definitely not seen them on TIA -maybe they were referenced in the source (which I didn’t use), so meh.
It’s crazy how deep they get into the syllabus on just a few topics. On a 40 point exam, I think that’s a horrible idea because you can select a few very difficult readings vs. a few very easy readings which will make the pass rates extremely volatile and pretty much luck-based. I was looking over the readings today, and I realized the actual exam only tested like 20-30 pages of material out of 800+. That’s really dumb and comparable to playing the lottery. Actuarial exams shouldn’t be like that. On these small exams, they should make an effort to include as much of the syllabus as they can. Otherwise, how can they even determine whether someone has adequate knowledge of the syllabus by testing <5% of it?
I felt ok after I took this one, but after yesterday’s adrenaline died down, I’m not so sure anymore. By a conservative estimate, I think I got 20 – 25 points, so hopefully there’s a ginormous curve. I think the pass rate will be very low this time (low 30%) due to all the niche and bizarre things they decided to test. The material for this exam honestly wasn’t that bad (though a little boring at times), but this exam felt harder than anything I’ve ever taken. I’m not sure if some of the exam questions were even on the syllabus, and for people who haven’t taken the other life exams yet, they would’ve had no idea what the questions were even asking. I agree with the others that this was a pretty poorly designed exam.
Sad thing for me is that this is the most prepared I’ve felt for an actuarial exam and ended up getting blindsided like most people here.
The more I think about this exam, the more frustrated I get. Looking through the objectives and source material, and I still can’t find a significant portion of the points on this exam. For anything that minor to be included on a short exam is just not right.
It’s so aggravating to have put in this much work and to have developed a deep understanding of the source material and important implications for Life Insurance companies, and then to come away feeling as if randomness will play a very large part in determining the outcome (which, by the way, literally shapes the rest of your life).
I’m right there with you. I put in many many hours this sitting, especially after getting a 5 last sitting, I wanted to know this syllabus inside and out. Incredibly frustrating to think about. It’s not an effective way of testing our knowledge.
I agree with the sentiment that has been shared on this forum. The exam was difficult for the wrong reasons and could have been designed much better. I felt my endless hours of studying were slapped in the face by out of the blue questions.
I think it’s important that we all email the SOA (education@soa.org) in order for our voices to be heard. If enough people bring the legitimate concerns that have been mentioned above to their attention, they may realize how serious this really is and be more mindful of the grading process for this sitting, in addition to considering the feedback for future exams.
Yes, I think we all should email the SOA and complain about Q1 at the very least. That question clearly had off syllabus material that should not have made it on to the LAM exam. I’m not sure when it’s safe to actually discuss exam questions, but I think one week after the exam (this Thursday) should be safe.
Yeah I agree we should all do that. Or we can do that though the feedback request the SOA sends. I believe I received that request today. So let’s make our voices heard. This was a very poorly designed exam.
Yeah I wrote a few paragraphs in the survey they sent out today. I will make sure to make my opinions heard via email as well
agreed with everyone! For Q1, some of the questions are definitely not on syllabus! and the last 7 point question is also unreasonable in a way that they put almost 20% of the points in one part of the question. Crazy!
I went back and re-read the source materials and saw that they tested on some random sentences and not really covered by TIA or Pak. Don’t know what to say, I put in a lot of hours and thought I knew the materials very well. I am just hoping SOA would somehow set a reasonable curve given that the exam is poorly designed and it is not fair to punish candidates.
I haven’t heard anything from the SOA yet (regarding the email I had written directly to education@soa.org). I did however fill out the survey and provided similar feedback.
I hope they don’t just lower the pass rate for this sitting and call it a day. That would be very disheartening. I believe our concerns are valid and should be taken seriously.
The SOA got back to my email not too long ago. They said they will review my feedback with the exam committee.
The Spring 2021 exam has also been posted. Does anyone plan on providing more specific feedback now that we have the exact questions at hand? I’m not sure how much it will change anything at this point or if the SOA already got the message.
Thoughts?
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