Transcript

[Olmstead]

People at my place usually don’t start study days until 3 months out

[Tigger0209]

I think it really depends on your personal situation. I’d argue that people writing their last 2-3 exams have more obligations in general – more responsibilities at work and home. So starting earlier is wise.

[resact26]

Agreed. The candidate pool is getting progressively younger though so I think it puts the traditionally older candidate (with more responsibility) at a disadvantage, especially in this situation where the timeline is compressed. Last year was also an example with COVID. People with families probably had a hard time making everything work at home while the younger folks likely had more time to study with little to no impediments.

[Psych14]

I wonder when they will release MAS passing names and stats.  Really curious how the stats will look this time around.

[act_123]

They never said they would release stats.

They in fact said they would not release examiner’s reports.  So the question is whether they will release anything at all.  They might, but we will have to see.

[resact26]

I don’t see any reason they wouldn’t release statistics. They never said they wouldn’t. Not sure how not releasing them would help “preserve the integrity of the process” or whatever the secondary reason was for not releasing the questions and examiner’s reports.

[Tigger0209]

You  could argue that the first few sittings are experimental as they figure our appropriate exsm length/format. Lets say this sitting exams are judged too long. They lower pass mark and more candidates pass because there is no way to distinguish those who could not finish from those who didn’t know how to do it. This could show a higher pass ratio (wishful thinking 😉 ). Next sitting pass ratio could be drastically different and could lead to questions.

[resact26]

That’s an interesting thought and I wish you were right. The reason I think that wouldn’t happen is that these last exams were written as a paper/pencil exam so I don’t think they would have been materially different than past exams.

[resact26]

Or maybe this is the CAS’s chance to silently purge the pipeline like they did with Blooms in 2011. Who knows? Lol

[resact26]

One more thing Tigger: since they’re gonna release the list of passing candidate names, its pretty easy to sum those up and extrapolate so even further reason why they would likely not hide the stats.

[Tigger0209]

Well, the unknown is whether it’s faster to do same exam on computer or slower. And while you can sum up, you don’t know how many wrote it.

[resact26]

You’re right on both points. I think the whole issue of time is a real thing. I mentioned in the surveys for the exams I took that they were too long. I never finished either but I suspect I would have in the paper and pencil environment, as strange as that sounds.

 

[Red]

It’s something I’ve noticed as well. Even though excel simplified some of the calculations, I find 1). It seems to take me longer to process a question on the computer and then formulate the response on a computer, 2). It is an absolute pain to work on some of the more formula intensive questions (like the frequently tested long formula in BKM7, oddly, I can’t recall if it was on the exam or not anymore).

I would really love to know if someone has come up with a trick on how to take on dealing with long formulas in excel.

[resact26]

And there I was thinking I was the only one. That’s exactly how I feel as well. I wish we could do some sort of survey to get a sense of how people felt about the TBE dynamic. So much mystery around this sitting which makes it harder to gauge how you did and if they might make adjustments since TBE was such a sweeping change.

[Red]

Meh, I think this is more of an issue for old geezers like myself (YMMV, not saying your old like me haha). I doubt a survey will change much since there will be people more adopted to the computer.

I am still used to doing stuff on pen and paper… I print out most of the study material so I can read it on paper (as oppose to screen). It’s just too hard to read on a computer, I am just not used to it.

I am just more used to solving problems on paper… so it will just take time for me to adjust (same thing with not able to start a damn formula on excel with a + sign)… I admit I didn’t use the scratch book as much as I should have in the exam… again, it’s just something I need to get use to.

Another thing I notice is that I seemed to glance over things much more on screen than it is on paper, again it is something to get used to.

Edit: Hey ResACt26, do you have an acct on GoActuary? The inability to at least edit your post here is super annoying…

[Tigger0209]

Weird, I can edit my posts. I also found it longer. I did practice doing every past exam in excel. But prometric spreadsheet was definitely more problematic. I did not pick up on all limitations during prometric practice questions posted online.

[Author]

Posts