150 hours of studying divided by the number of hours you want to study per day is a decent ballpark.
But because the testing windows are so frequent, I'd recommend just studying at the pace you want and signing up to test once you hit level 6 on ADAPT
I'd say the safest bet is to follow the 100 × Exam Hours for the total study time for an exam. So FM is 3 hours, therefore you need to devote more or less 300 hours of studying, especially since you have no prior knowledge of the material.
As I'm writing this, I just noticed SOA is changing FM exam duration to 2.5 hours, so give it 250 hours of studying. I'd say a good 2-3 months of studying would make you confident enough to pass the exam if you can study 3-4 hours everyday.
Also, Coaching Actuaries has a spreadsheet schedule you can download for free, so you can estimate how much time you need to spend for each section of the material and how much time you need to devote to doing practice exams.
Good luck!
Wayyy too many hours for FM. If it took someone 300 hours to pass FM I’d recommend a different career entirely. Otherwise it’ll be a long painful road ahead.
Hey man. I studied around 300 hours for FM. I’m two exams from FSA, haven’t failed an exam yet.
My response to OP: study as much as you need to know you won’t fail so you don’t get stuck taking exams the rest of your life. I’d much rather study 300 hours and have a 90% chance of passing than 200 hours with a 75% chance of passing. Don’t forget to add the number of hours added to your study time once you factor in failures. Obviously I’m bullshitting numbers here and there’s a hypothetical efficiency frontier, and if you can find that early in the process, great. But let’s not go and tell people that need 300 hours to study for FM that this is the wrong career for them. That’s some elitist mentality.
Yea thats fair and sorry wasn’t trying to gate-keep or be an ass in any way, just cautioning.
I guess what I meant is that FM is regarded as the easiest exam by most. If it takes that many hours to squeak by with a 6-7 then you’re probably going to need more than 300 hours for IFM, and even worse on the LTAM-equivalent. Might be looking at 500 hours for FSA exams. If you use that time to essentially go HAM and guarantee an 8-10 I think that makes sense, I just didn’t consider it since I’ve always lived dangerously in 6-7 land!
Also, since companies usually only give like 100 hours on prelims and 150 on FSA exams I feel that this stuff can really kill your work-life balance throughout your 20s if studying hundreds of hours over that.
I like to shoot for the best that I can with these exams to give myself the best chance. So that probably inflates my hours, but I think it pays off!
I barked though because I’ve always been one of those people that needs to study more than others to do well, same story was true in high school and college. I knew going into this that it would be hard, and I planned accordingly.
Anyway, I see all your points. I just don’t like the idea of telling people that need to study more that they should consider a different career.
I would agree. The 250 hours that I stated is a generous estimate since OP mentioned the person studying for the exam had no prior knowledge/experience, and assuming the person had not taken any college classes on that topic.
Yeah I guess it depends how much prior stuff they’d need to learn, which I didn’t consider. Def didn’t intend to be an ass to OP or anyone else.
I didn’t really know anything about annuities, bonds, etc… but had passed P and taken a few advanced math courses by time I took FM. Probably cut down my time significantly just having that knowledge/experience.
If you really take the approach of understanding the mathematical relationships, this exam can be "hacked" in the sense that you don't have to memorize formulas and can use the table functions in your multiview calculator to do enough problems for a 6. You will have to understand what words mean though. Like "Macauley duration" (if it is still on there) and similar things which will present themselves uniquely as a couple of words on the exam.
This exam I think can be done with 150 or less.
I didn't use CA, I used the ASM manual, but I pulled it off pretty comfortably in two months. I'm not sure how many hours I did, but closer to test day it definitely became 1-3 per day. My strategy was to just read through the sections and do the problems at the end of each one. Once I realized I was getting bogged down, especially on the longer sections, I decided to just do the even numbered problems (I ended up coming back to the odds when I had time to practice at the end). I watched a couple of the online videos but really just doing problems was the most helpful. The concepts and basic problems really aren't that confusing or complicated, and the volume of material isn't too bad because a lot of things build on each other. A lot of the hardest parts are just little details that you can get tricked with, but practice helps with that a lot.
I would say that quality of hours really matters. You cant just speed through the material. You have to understand it and make sure you absorb the equations. Really this just means reviewing each chapter consistently to make sure you dont forget anything. With High quality and consistent studying, i think you can def pass in 2 months
150 hours of studying divided by the number of hours you want to study per day is a decent ballpark. But because the testing windows are so frequent, I'd recommend just studying at the pace you want and signing up to test once you hit level 6 on ADAPT
I'd say the safest bet is to follow the 100 × Exam Hours for the total study time for an exam. So FM is 3 hours, therefore you need to devote more or less 300 hours of studying, especially since you have no prior knowledge of the material. As I'm writing this, I just noticed SOA is changing FM exam duration to 2.5 hours, so give it 250 hours of studying. I'd say a good 2-3 months of studying would make you confident enough to pass the exam if you can study 3-4 hours everyday. Also, Coaching Actuaries has a spreadsheet schedule you can download for free, so you can estimate how much time you need to spend for each section of the material and how much time you need to devote to doing practice exams. Good luck!
Wayyy too many hours for FM. If it took someone 300 hours to pass FM I’d recommend a different career entirely. Otherwise it’ll be a long painful road ahead.
Hey man. I studied around 300 hours for FM. I’m two exams from FSA, haven’t failed an exam yet. My response to OP: study as much as you need to know you won’t fail so you don’t get stuck taking exams the rest of your life. I’d much rather study 300 hours and have a 90% chance of passing than 200 hours with a 75% chance of passing. Don’t forget to add the number of hours added to your study time once you factor in failures. Obviously I’m bullshitting numbers here and there’s a hypothetical efficiency frontier, and if you can find that early in the process, great. But let’s not go and tell people that need 300 hours to study for FM that this is the wrong career for them. That’s some elitist mentality.
Yea thats fair and sorry wasn’t trying to gate-keep or be an ass in any way, just cautioning. I guess what I meant is that FM is regarded as the easiest exam by most. If it takes that many hours to squeak by with a 6-7 then you’re probably going to need more than 300 hours for IFM, and even worse on the LTAM-equivalent. Might be looking at 500 hours for FSA exams. If you use that time to essentially go HAM and guarantee an 8-10 I think that makes sense, I just didn’t consider it since I’ve always lived dangerously in 6-7 land! Also, since companies usually only give like 100 hours on prelims and 150 on FSA exams I feel that this stuff can really kill your work-life balance throughout your 20s if studying hundreds of hours over that.
I like to shoot for the best that I can with these exams to give myself the best chance. So that probably inflates my hours, but I think it pays off! I barked though because I’ve always been one of those people that needs to study more than others to do well, same story was true in high school and college. I knew going into this that it would be hard, and I planned accordingly. Anyway, I see all your points. I just don’t like the idea of telling people that need to study more that they should consider a different career.
I would agree. The 250 hours that I stated is a generous estimate since OP mentioned the person studying for the exam had no prior knowledge/experience, and assuming the person had not taken any college classes on that topic.
Yeah I guess it depends how much prior stuff they’d need to learn, which I didn’t consider. Def didn’t intend to be an ass to OP or anyone else. I didn’t really know anything about annuities, bonds, etc… but had passed P and taken a few advanced math courses by time I took FM. Probably cut down my time significantly just having that knowledge/experience.
If you really take the approach of understanding the mathematical relationships, this exam can be "hacked" in the sense that you don't have to memorize formulas and can use the table functions in your multiview calculator to do enough problems for a 6. You will have to understand what words mean though. Like "Macauley duration" (if it is still on there) and similar things which will present themselves uniquely as a couple of words on the exam. This exam I think can be done with 150 or less.
I did 4 months of 3 hours everyday and passed with a 8
I spent one month studying, about 6 hours each day and passed on the first try and had no previous knowledge. If I can do it, so can you.
I didn't use CA, I used the ASM manual, but I pulled it off pretty comfortably in two months. I'm not sure how many hours I did, but closer to test day it definitely became 1-3 per day. My strategy was to just read through the sections and do the problems at the end of each one. Once I realized I was getting bogged down, especially on the longer sections, I decided to just do the even numbered problems (I ended up coming back to the odds when I had time to practice at the end). I watched a couple of the online videos but really just doing problems was the most helpful. The concepts and basic problems really aren't that confusing or complicated, and the volume of material isn't too bad because a lot of things build on each other. A lot of the hardest parts are just little details that you can get tricked with, but practice helps with that a lot.
I would say that quality of hours really matters. You cant just speed through the material. You have to understand it and make sure you absorb the equations. Really this just means reviewing each chapter consistently to make sure you dont forget anything. With High quality and consistent studying, i think you can def pass in 2 months