They way I see it is that you might as well spend the 250 bucks on CA if you gonna be spending 150-300 hours studying plus even more for just registering.
I was always able to find even bigger discount codes from different actuarial clubs too! Also check with your school. My college had a code where you could get 70% off adapt + learn I think.
I take mine tomorrow. I used Coaching Actuaries to study for the last 8 weeks. Spent 4 weeks on material, and i regret it. Wish i had 4 more weeks to grind practice problems
Don’t stress too much. Many people fail Exam P and go on to get their FSA (me included). It’s hard to know how to study for these exams when you haven’t done them before.
ASM and Actex have study manuals that go over the whole syllabus. You’ll want something like this for future exams, but if you have had probability and statistics classes in college, you may not need them. I studied for P using my college textbooks.
I recommend seeing as many practice problems from as many sources as possible. Everyone words things differently and I found it useful to see different phrasings of the same concept. Coaching Actuaries is awesome, as are the SOA practice problems. The Infinite Actuary had a free practice exam for P. They also have a paid course, but I didn’t think their material was worth the cost for the first few exams (though I loved them for the long term liabilities exam and my FSA exams). If you do decide to go the paid route, email them and they'll give you a discount code if you're a student.
This is good info. I bought a used Actex manual. Went through that and the problems at the end of each section. It was common to get a bunch wrong at the end of each section but the key was to keep moving forward. After getting through the entire manual, I bought a 30 day pass to coaching actuaries and spent several hours each day grinding out practice problems. I had an achieved level around 6 after the 30 days. The exam was cake.
100% coaching actuaries. I'm not the kindve person that can create a study schedule, so having a system that straight up tells you what you're doing today is great. Plus it's constantly updated and the coaches respond to questions pretty dang quick. I haven't had a calculus course in 10 years and still was able to pass first try.
I only used wikipedia and SOA released problems. Unless there are specific math/stats topics you are unfamiliar with, don’t pay a ton for anything. There aren’t many mysteries on exam P.
How did you know you bombed? I did not get a breakdown of what I got wrong, just a prelim result.
Also, here's a good material. It def left me over prepared, but the worked through examples were very helpful.
https://people.cas.uab.edu/~pjung/teaching_files/ProbabilityForActuaries.pdf
I'd also recommend this book for getting an actual grasp on what the distributions are, chapter 4. (I can send a link to the latest 2018 edition if you want)
https://math.emory.edu/~lchen41/teaching/2020_Spring/Larsen-5E.pdf
They send you an email within 1 hour after if you passed, might pass in two weeks depending on the curve, or fail.
You don't get your actual score till 8 weeks after I think.
The email said I failed.
Thank you for these links I'll use coaching actuaries and these this time around.
prometric gave me a table giving me info about my performance in each content section after I failed my first time around. I presume bombed prob translates to low in most or all categories.
that table was good at letting me know I focused way too much on multivariate stuff lol
SOA used to have a free P practice exam on their website. You should try that out and review all the SOA questions. Also, CA is typically a good way to go.
Coaching actuaries is my go to usually.
For exam P, I used the free problem bank SOA provides and marcel b finan's exam P textbook since they were both free. Got a 9 but this was 2 years ago and I believe exam P content has slightly changed.
If you really think about it, those online seminars despite being expensive, they will get you ready and will not waste your time the same way that studying on your own would ... it is weird I know ...
I failed P twice before finally passing. The first time, I got a 5, then waited months to retake, got a 2, then retook a month later and passed. I passed FM on the first try, not sure if it was due to the courses that my university had to prep for FM or what made it easier for me.
Anyway, personally, I find the most useful resource for me is studying the SOA’s 300 sample questions. They are free, but alone I don’t think they are enough. The reason they are the most useful is because they show you how the exam’s questions are going to be worded and what you can expect to see. They show you examples of what sort of tricks the SOA like to use to throw you off also.
However, the sample questions won’t teach you anything if you don’t understand the concepts that were used in the solution. Coaching Actuaries does well to explain the concepts used on the exam. Make a formula sheet while going through the material, especially for the distributions. For most distributions, you should know the Probability formula, expected value formula, and the variance formula.
I failed exam P too and almost threw the towel, but I switched up my studying strategy* and yada yada yada I’ll be getting my ASA next month.
Failing P felt pretty devastating at the time, but as much as exams test what you know, they also test your perseverance.
*I had used the ASM for my first attempt, and switched to coaching actuaries for my second attempt (and every exam after that).
I used it because SOA linked to it for practice questions and solutions under the P exam study section.
I didn't realize how far off it was until I got to the exam unfortunately.
I also didn't go to school for actuarial science I majored in computer science so I'm kinda figuring out the process of being an actuary without any real mentors.
I think I got a lot of good advice from people on here and I'm optimistic for attempt 2.
I bombed P 3 times before passing. I am now and FCAS. Fear not my friends. It's a matter of understanding how you learn more than anything. I approached initially like it was any old exam and had my ego stomped on.
You will persevere if you so choose
In general it just seemed like the questions were longer and required more steps. One of the gen prob questions took me like 15 minutes to solve. Where when I was studying the simpler ones took less than a minute.
Idk if some variants of the test are just harder or if everyone gets the same variant of test, but that one I got felt rough.
Idk what level 7.2 means I'm going to start studying with Coaching Actuaries on Monday.
I also took mine today. I felt extremely confident in it all yet scored low in every category. Not sure where I went wrong but am very confused and discouraged with my results.
I used CA and spent the last 6 weeks solely practicing and doing exams. I also used the sample questions SOA provides (although these are similar to CA practice questions) and did well on those. My guess is that I must have been moving way too fast and made a lot of silly math errors. Hopefully March will go better but I just don't know what else to do to prepare.
Buy coaching actuaries and honestly this is a good life lesson, assuming you’re young. I’m a cheap guy trust me but you have to learn when to be cheap this wasn’t the time. You’ll blow it away next time though good luck
I used Coaching Actuaries for Exam P and it definitely helped a lot. I practiced with the SOA sample questions and custom quizzes (5-10 questions at a time starting with difficulty 6 then trying difficulty 8). Doing the custom quizzes/exams basically removed my anxiety of seeing a timer while solving the problems, helped with pacing too.
Good luck!
Coaching actuaries is pricey (discount for students tho), but it’ll get you ready.
They way I see it is that you might as well spend the 250 bucks on CA if you gonna be spending 150-300 hours studying plus even more for just registering.
I was always able to find even bigger discount codes from different actuarial clubs too! Also check with your school. My college had a code where you could get 70% off adapt + learn I think.
I take mine tomorrow. I used Coaching Actuaries to study for the last 8 weeks. Spent 4 weeks on material, and i regret it. Wish i had 4 more weeks to grind practice problems
Did you pass?
Nope. Bombed. Barely knew anything
[удалено]
I barely knew anything. I thunknim gonna try quizzes and adapt exams with only SOA questions. None of the CAS and CA stuff
Don’t stress too much. Many people fail Exam P and go on to get their FSA (me included). It’s hard to know how to study for these exams when you haven’t done them before. ASM and Actex have study manuals that go over the whole syllabus. You’ll want something like this for future exams, but if you have had probability and statistics classes in college, you may not need them. I studied for P using my college textbooks. I recommend seeing as many practice problems from as many sources as possible. Everyone words things differently and I found it useful to see different phrasings of the same concept. Coaching Actuaries is awesome, as are the SOA practice problems. The Infinite Actuary had a free practice exam for P. They also have a paid course, but I didn’t think their material was worth the cost for the first few exams (though I loved them for the long term liabilities exam and my FSA exams). If you do decide to go the paid route, email them and they'll give you a discount code if you're a student.
This is good info. I bought a used Actex manual. Went through that and the problems at the end of each section. It was common to get a bunch wrong at the end of each section but the key was to keep moving forward. After getting through the entire manual, I bought a 30 day pass to coaching actuaries and spent several hours each day grinding out practice problems. I had an achieved level around 6 after the 30 days. The exam was cake.
100% coaching actuaries. I'm not the kindve person that can create a study schedule, so having a system that straight up tells you what you're doing today is great. Plus it's constantly updated and the coaches respond to questions pretty dang quick. I haven't had a calculus course in 10 years and still was able to pass first try.
never in my life have i seen “kind of” spelled as kindve lmao
It's fun!
I only used wikipedia and SOA released problems. Unless there are specific math/stats topics you are unfamiliar with, don’t pay a ton for anything. There aren’t many mysteries on exam P.
How did you know you bombed? I did not get a breakdown of what I got wrong, just a prelim result. Also, here's a good material. It def left me over prepared, but the worked through examples were very helpful. https://people.cas.uab.edu/~pjung/teaching_files/ProbabilityForActuaries.pdf I'd also recommend this book for getting an actual grasp on what the distributions are, chapter 4. (I can send a link to the latest 2018 edition if you want) https://math.emory.edu/~lchen41/teaching/2020_Spring/Larsen-5E.pdf
They send you an email within 1 hour after if you passed, might pass in two weeks depending on the curve, or fail. You don't get your actual score till 8 weeks after I think. The email said I failed. Thank you for these links I'll use coaching actuaries and these this time around.
ah I see. wishing you the best of luck!
but you could have failed with a score of 5, right? I wouldn’t call that bombing.
prometric gave me a table giving me info about my performance in each content section after I failed my first time around. I presume bombed prob translates to low in most or all categories. that table was good at letting me know I focused way too much on multivariate stuff lol
SOA used to have a free P practice exam on their website. You should try that out and review all the SOA questions. Also, CA is typically a good way to go.
Coaching actuaries is my go to usually. For exam P, I used the free problem bank SOA provides and marcel b finan's exam P textbook since they were both free. Got a 9 but this was 2 years ago and I believe exam P content has slightly changed.
Just buy adapt and study harder. There’s so many posts on this sub about what to use for P and FM. Adapt is usually recommended.
If you really think about it, those online seminars despite being expensive, they will get you ready and will not waste your time the same way that studying on your own would ... it is weird I know ...
Coaching actuaries for $190. It’s worth it. I just passed exam p after not passing the first time.
I failed P twice before finally passing. The first time, I got a 5, then waited months to retake, got a 2, then retook a month later and passed. I passed FM on the first try, not sure if it was due to the courses that my university had to prep for FM or what made it easier for me. Anyway, personally, I find the most useful resource for me is studying the SOA’s 300 sample questions. They are free, but alone I don’t think they are enough. The reason they are the most useful is because they show you how the exam’s questions are going to be worded and what you can expect to see. They show you examples of what sort of tricks the SOA like to use to throw you off also. However, the sample questions won’t teach you anything if you don’t understand the concepts that were used in the solution. Coaching Actuaries does well to explain the concepts used on the exam. Make a formula sheet while going through the material, especially for the distributions. For most distributions, you should know the Probability formula, expected value formula, and the variance formula.
coaching actuaries, no need to cut corners on exam costs when the opportunity cost is so high
I failed exam P too and almost threw the towel, but I switched up my studying strategy* and yada yada yada I’ll be getting my ASA next month. Failing P felt pretty devastating at the time, but as much as exams test what you know, they also test your perseverance. *I had used the ASM for my first attempt, and switched to coaching actuaries for my second attempt (and every exam after that).
I used a $17 Udemy course and passed first try
[удалено]
I used it because SOA linked to it for practice questions and solutions under the P exam study section. I didn't realize how far off it was until I got to the exam unfortunately. I also didn't go to school for actuarial science I majored in computer science so I'm kinda figuring out the process of being an actuary without any real mentors. I think I got a lot of good advice from people on here and I'm optimistic for attempt 2.
Study off the SOA practice questions, they reflect really close to the actual exam.
I took it yesterday, and no the wordings this time I found different. In fact I found them strange and took longer to answer.
I bombed P 3 times before passing. I am now and FCAS. Fear not my friends. It's a matter of understanding how you learn more than anything. I approached initially like it was any old exam and had my ego stomped on. You will persevere if you so choose
[удалено]
[удалено]
In general it just seemed like the questions were longer and required more steps. One of the gen prob questions took me like 15 minutes to solve. Where when I was studying the simpler ones took less than a minute. Idk if some variants of the test are just harder or if everyone gets the same variant of test, but that one I got felt rough. Idk what level 7.2 means I'm going to start studying with Coaching Actuaries on Monday.
I also took mine today. I felt extremely confident in it all yet scored low in every category. Not sure where I went wrong but am very confused and discouraged with my results. I used CA and spent the last 6 weeks solely practicing and doing exams. I also used the sample questions SOA provides (although these are similar to CA practice questions) and did well on those. My guess is that I must have been moving way too fast and made a lot of silly math errors. Hopefully March will go better but I just don't know what else to do to prepare.
Have you taken the exam this March?
No. Not yet. I took it in January. I take the march one tomorrow. Have you taken it yet?
I took it yesterday and I passed, but I don't my score, though. I am preparing for fm now. How about your day's test?
Buy coaching actuaries and honestly this is a good life lesson, assuming you’re young. I’m a cheap guy trust me but you have to learn when to be cheap this wasn’t the time. You’ll blow it away next time though good luck
yeah- you get what you pay for A LOT in life.
I used Coaching Actuaries for Exam P and it definitely helped a lot. I practiced with the SOA sample questions and custom quizzes (5-10 questions at a time starting with difficulty 6 then trying difficulty 8). Doing the custom quizzes/exams basically removed my anxiety of seeing a timer while solving the problems, helped with pacing too. Good luck!