Sunday, February 21, 2010

Ooooooooo That Stings!

So I took the actuarial exam that I have been prepping for this whole time. If you haven't heard, (or can't figure it out from the title above), I did not pass. It's okay, passing was actually not the main goal this time around. I'm not saying I wasn't hoping too. I gave myself a 20-25% chance of actually passing. Failing hurt but I was really taking the exam to learn what it was like and what to expect.

I now feel like when I go to take my exam in May I will be better prepared for having seen what it is like. As far as how I actually did goes, I don't get a grade back for 8 weeks or so. I do have a GREAT noterized (is that a word?) sheet of paper telling me that I failed. Maybe I'll get it framed. I'm betting that when I do get my grade it's going to be a 5, maybe a 4. A 5 would mean I got 90-99% of what was required for passing, a 4 80-89%. Either one of those grades would make me feel like once I have learnt the material I didn't know anything about that I should pass relatively easily. If I get a 3 or lower it means I just have to put in that much more time and effort studying to kick this exams butt.

My school (the University of Connecticut) has been named by the Society of Actuaries as a Center of Actuarial Excellence. I believe they have named 10 of them. So another school, Drake I believe, has created a program called ADAPT for preparing for these exams. You'll never guess what ADAPT does. ADAPT adapts! So you take practice tests and it figures out what you are having problems with, what you are strong at, etc and compensates to help you practice. They usually charge $69.00 for this (which is well worth it in my opinion in theory) but they have offered it to us at UCONN for testing for free this semester! So I've signed up but haven't started practice with it yet. More on that later.

The other big development for me lately has been a new method of organizing my to-dos, which does involve crossing things off of lists!!! But that's a post for another day

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, post more! Here I was feeling all bad that I haven't checked it in a while and I hardly missed anything. :p

    ReplyDelete