Caden Baumgartner, a Coaching Actuaries Campus Club ambassador at Washington State University, shares the lesson that carried him from intuition-based studying to passing Exam P.
Growing up, I loved studying math. It was something that just intuitively made sense to me. Everything fit well, every equation had an answer. It was no wonder that I found it easy to pass high school–level classes.
But little did I know at the time, this turned out to be a hindrance rather than a gift. It taught me to rely on intuition rather than discipline.
[Excelling early] taught me to rely on intuition rather than discipline.
Once the material became more challenging, it became difficult to use this same method. The more abstract a topic, the harder it becomes to use intuition to pass.
My Exam P Reality Check
This was made no more apparent than when I began preparing for Exam P, my first actuarial exam. I had taken statistics classes before and naively thought that I was well-prepared for the exam based just on this.
This was not true, and a lesson I am lucky to have learned before my first exam attempt came to me from a mentor who had passed three exams. He told me, "There are no shortcuts for studying for an actuarial exam."
Base-Level Knowledge Is Not Enough
This stuck with me while I began preparing via Coaching Actuaries material. The actual exam sits around an EL (Earned Level) of 5.5 to 6.5. When I began taking short quizzes at this level, I saw immediately what my mentor had meant. A base-level knowledge does not suffice for an exam.
Most sources say that you should study 100 hours for each hour of exam time. Going from low study time before a test to preemptively setting aside an hour or 2 per day consistently to study months before a test was definitely a challenge, but one that helped prepare me for the exam cycle (and passing Exam P!).
Study time works a lot like monetary compounding.
What I Hope You Take Away
If you are to take away something from this post, I'd hope it would be this:
- There are no shortcuts for an actuarial exam.
- Study time works a lot like monetary compounding; you can decide not to study today, but you make up for it with interest down the road.
About the Author
Caden Baumgartner is a Campus Club ambassador for Washington State University, where he is a senior majoring in actuarial science with a double minor in business administration and statistics. He has passed his first actuarial exam, Exam P, and is also one of his club's SOA ambassadors. He loves hiking in Pullman and the Greater Seattle Area, as well as volunteering for Habitat for Humanity.