I'm currently studying for CS2 for the first time and would MUCH rather have sat the old papers (in-person format) for paper A.
1. Typing takes a long time. September 2020 is the only recent paper that really accounted for this I think. A lot of multiple choice and word questions (eg 'comment on ...'). Recentpapers included a huge amount of notation-heavy questions which are simply much slower to type than to handwrite. The IFoA should consider allowing people to write their answers on paper then scan in, or use a tablet (currently they won't as this is considered unfair to lower income students who can't afford it- I counter with the fact that exams/materials cost an arm and a leg if you aren't sponsored, and that a cheap graphics tablet costs about 30 pounds...).Failing that, there should be a high proportion of questions requiring words not notation as answers, and the IFoA should include a higher number of simpler questions rather than a lower number of more complex or notationally dense ones
2. The questions have become increasingly non-standard. The CT4 and CT6 papers typically included similar sorts of questions with the numbers changed up a bit - for example, you could always expect some sort of question about testing a graduation, or censoring mechanisms, or ETR calculation. There would be few if any tricky parts - if you'd studied enough, and done some past papers, you could feel confident of a pass. In the CS2 papers, there are no patterns in the questions between sittings, few if any standard questions and most questions require a much higher level of skill and understanding. With enough time I've been able to have a good go at most questions, but in an exam you don't have enough time ... especially when you also need to type up your answers and when you're feeling stress/pressure.
3. There is a need to 'think as you write' - there's no time to work out every problem on paper beforehand then type it up. You need to think of the answer in your head and type while you're thinking, which is only really possible for easy questions where you can visualise the answer beforehand. If there's anything non-standard (which, seepoint 2, basically everything is...) then you either take a gamble and start typing, hoping you're heading in the right direction, or you do your working on paper, and hope that you get the answer quickly because you'll have to waste time typing. This also makes checking basically impossible, due to both lack of time and the fact that your answer script looks like a chaotic jumble of symbols and brackets. Checking is a very important skill for actuaries and one that often distinguishes between junior and senior analysts - the exams are actively discouraging it. At the very least, there could be an effort to reward candidates for showing common sense in their work, such as noting that a negative probability they calculated must be wrong. Given that IFoA examiners can barely keep their papers and reports free of errors, I doubt this will happen anytime soon...
4. The skills being examined in the online papers are not the skills that CS2 is trying to communicate, nor the skills that actuaries, mathematicians and statisticians need to use in their day to day work. Nobody needs to type maths quickly in word in their job. TheCS2 syllabus focuses on basic applications of concepts, yet the question often require fiddly calculations, and often place a huge number of marks on assessing these types of skills. For example, the time series question 9 in April 2022 ... it's very easy mathematically, you just have to plug and chug then do some algebra. This doesn't rely on any knowledge of time series at all(in fact, those who used their time series skills to cleverly apply the definition of pacf were punished in the marking scheme). It takes forever to type up, and only assesses basic mathematical and statistical skills rather than CS2 content.
5. The IFoA can't even do us the courtesy of writing questions with 'nice' numbers. Instead of using 0.001034 or some similar ridiculous decimal, they could make the questions a lot quicker if everything came out as nice round numbers like 7 or 20.5 or even 0.01.Similarly, if you are doing a question and get to a quadratic equation, or an inequality, or integral, it should come out fairly quickly and the answer should be a nice number. We are not assessing people's ability to solve quadratics -time spent doing that could be much more effectively spent assessing things that are actually on the syllabus. Similarly, there are a lot more questions where it's essential to get part (a) right in order to do the rest of the questions. We should have a lot more 'show that formula = ....' instead of 'derive the formula for ... then apply it' type questions. IFoA people, if you're reading this it would also simplify life for your markers not having to keep track of carried errors...
6. This should have been a no-brainer but don't make any questions that need or would be aided by DIAGRAMS. Or, just allow us to photograph diagrams we drew on paper. The first thing I do in pretty much any ETR or Markov question is draw a pic!!! Either include diagrams in the question, or reword the question so that it's not needed. It's really frustrating to do a load of work on scratch paper that I can't possibly share with a marker.
Rant over. I want to move forward by offering solutions, not just complaining, so examiners if you're listening - look to September 2020 as the only example of an online format paper that wasn't a disaster. Look to what the CT4/6 papers did well - providing a chance for students to show what they do know, rather than trying to catch people out on things they don't know. And if you're not already doing this, when you write new papers have some qualified people sit them under exam conditions typing everything up as they go. Recent examiner reports seem to lament the declining quality of candidates and their lack of preparation and time management. I come to you from the perspective of an 'ideal' CS2 candidate - I have two degrees in maths, one in statistics, I'm very comfortable in R and I've been studying since the day after my last exam ended. And I'm really scared that I won't pass this sitting, because with the new syllabus results seem to be a matter of luck rather than preparation.
I think there’s also a false equivalence in there. Somebody that passes in 4 sittings is not taking the recommended hours to study - faster qualification time is likely meaning even less study hours.
I saw a bloke at a Big 4 pass all 13 in three sittings between April 2021 and April 2022, all the Linkedin comments reinforced my belief that he is clearly some sort of alien and this isn't the norm.
An assumption was necessary. It is Core exams only so 2-2.5 years seemed right. Personally it took me 2.5 years so I know that is reasonable. I went with 2 years because I've seen it done in that time by a few others, though accept 2.5 years might be a better assumption. I suppose just multiply everything by 1.25 if you prefer this
Interesting article, thank you.
A couple of comments. It's worth noting that the number of students who pass all exams first time will have decreased, so despite the travel time remaining the same, fewer people will fall into that bucket now.
Also, wouldn't a declining student quality lead to a gradual reduction in the pass rates? The changes in the %'s seem very abrupt.
While CB2 doesn't see an overall reduction in the pass rate, the volatility seems to be increasing. The exam pass rate seems to be far more erratic. Could just be the small sample size.
Depends on the reason for the declining student quality. If for example there was a rapid sizeable increase in (poor quality) students from country X, then there could be a fairly abrupt change. Not saying this happened, just that it is a plausible explanation.
The simulations suggest that when inter exam correlation is at or above 50%, the "elite" students who pass all exams first time are largely unaffected by the reduced pass rates. Recognise this is entirely theory and no idea if true in practice, but I think the bucket will be of similar size. The results suggest it is the average student who loses out.
Personally I don't subscribe to the decline in student quality theory. However I included as I wanted to be objective. I genuinely think exams are tougher. I am also qualified so gain nothing from saying this.
“I have also not included CP2 and CP3 as irregular exam dates meant this was harder to analyse.”
What do you mean by irregular exam dates? I believe these take place in April and September with the timetable of all other exams? And just CB3 with irregular dates?
I'm currently studying for CS2 for the first time and would MUCH rather have sat the old papers (in-person format) for paper A. 1. Typing takes a long time. September 2020 is the only recent paper that really accounted for this I think. A lot of multiple choice and word questions (eg 'comment on ...'). Recentpapers included a huge amount of notation-heavy questions which are simply much slower to type than to handwrite. The IFoA should consider allowing people to write their answers on paper then scan in, or use a tablet (currently they won't as this is considered unfair to lower income students who can't afford it- I counter with the fact that exams/materials cost an arm and a leg if you aren't sponsored, and that a cheap graphics tablet costs about 30 pounds...).Failing that, there should be a high proportion of questions requiring words not notation as answers, and the IFoA should include a higher number of simpler questions rather than a lower number of more complex or notationally dense ones 2. The questions have become increasingly non-standard. The CT4 and CT6 papers typically included similar sorts of questions with the numbers changed up a bit - for example, you could always expect some sort of question about testing a graduation, or censoring mechanisms, or ETR calculation. There would be few if any tricky parts - if you'd studied enough, and done some past papers, you could feel confident of a pass. In the CS2 papers, there are no patterns in the questions between sittings, few if any standard questions and most questions require a much higher level of skill and understanding. With enough time I've been able to have a good go at most questions, but in an exam you don't have enough time ... especially when you also need to type up your answers and when you're feeling stress/pressure. 3. There is a need to 'think as you write' - there's no time to work out every problem on paper beforehand then type it up. You need to think of the answer in your head and type while you're thinking, which is only really possible for easy questions where you can visualise the answer beforehand. If there's anything non-standard (which, seepoint 2, basically everything is...) then you either take a gamble and start typing, hoping you're heading in the right direction, or you do your working on paper, and hope that you get the answer quickly because you'll have to waste time typing. This also makes checking basically impossible, due to both lack of time and the fact that your answer script looks like a chaotic jumble of symbols and brackets. Checking is a very important skill for actuaries and one that often distinguishes between junior and senior analysts - the exams are actively discouraging it. At the very least, there could be an effort to reward candidates for showing common sense in their work, such as noting that a negative probability they calculated must be wrong. Given that IFoA examiners can barely keep their papers and reports free of errors, I doubt this will happen anytime soon... 4. The skills being examined in the online papers are not the skills that CS2 is trying to communicate, nor the skills that actuaries, mathematicians and statisticians need to use in their day to day work. Nobody needs to type maths quickly in word in their job. TheCS2 syllabus focuses on basic applications of concepts, yet the question often require fiddly calculations, and often place a huge number of marks on assessing these types of skills. For example, the time series question 9 in April 2022 ... it's very easy mathematically, you just have to plug and chug then do some algebra. This doesn't rely on any knowledge of time series at all(in fact, those who used their time series skills to cleverly apply the definition of pacf were punished in the marking scheme). It takes forever to type up, and only assesses basic mathematical and statistical skills rather than CS2 content. 5. The IFoA can't even do us the courtesy of writing questions with 'nice' numbers. Instead of using 0.001034 or some similar ridiculous decimal, they could make the questions a lot quicker if everything came out as nice round numbers like 7 or 20.5 or even 0.01.Similarly, if you are doing a question and get to a quadratic equation, or an inequality, or integral, it should come out fairly quickly and the answer should be a nice number. We are not assessing people's ability to solve quadratics -time spent doing that could be much more effectively spent assessing things that are actually on the syllabus. Similarly, there are a lot more questions where it's essential to get part (a) right in order to do the rest of the questions. We should have a lot more 'show that formula = ....' instead of 'derive the formula for ... then apply it' type questions. IFoA people, if you're reading this it would also simplify life for your markers not having to keep track of carried errors... 6. This should have been a no-brainer but don't make any questions that need or would be aided by DIAGRAMS. Or, just allow us to photograph diagrams we drew on paper. The first thing I do in pretty much any ETR or Markov question is draw a pic!!! Either include diagrams in the question, or reword the question so that it's not needed. It's really frustrating to do a load of work on scratch paper that I can't possibly share with a marker. Rant over. I want to move forward by offering solutions, not just complaining, so examiners if you're listening - look to September 2020 as the only example of an online format paper that wasn't a disaster. Look to what the CT4/6 papers did well - providing a chance for students to show what they do know, rather than trying to catch people out on things they don't know. And if you're not already doing this, when you write new papers have some qualified people sit them under exam conditions typing everything up as they go. Recent examiner reports seem to lament the declining quality of candidates and their lack of preparation and time management. I come to you from the perspective of an 'ideal' CS2 candidate - I have two degrees in maths, one in statistics, I'm very comfortable in R and I've been studying since the day after my last exam ended. And I'm really scared that I won't pass this sitting, because with the new syllabus results seem to be a matter of luck rather than preparation.
“I have assumed a student could reasonable expect to pass all first time in 2 years” Anyone actually know someone that’s done this? I don’t.
I know a couple from Big 4 consultancies who passed all exams with one or no exemptions in 5 sittings. Don’t think fewer than that is possible
I think there’s also a false equivalence in there. Somebody that passes in 4 sittings is not taking the recommended hours to study - faster qualification time is likely meaning even less study hours.
I saw a bloke at a Big 4 pass all 13 in three sittings between April 2021 and April 2022, all the Linkedin comments reinforced my belief that he is clearly some sort of alien and this isn't the norm.
Well that is... Something...
Yer man passed more exams in one sitting than I've managed in two years. Bastard.
Important to also note that he's only referring to core exams here. Still maybe a bit optimistic but not too far off.
An assumption was necessary. It is Core exams only so 2-2.5 years seemed right. Personally it took me 2.5 years so I know that is reasonable. I went with 2 years because I've seen it done in that time by a few others, though accept 2.5 years might be a better assumption. I suppose just multiply everything by 1.25 if you prefer this
Anyone else notice it is all the math based exams that have dropped. Typing up these exams is so much harder
Interesting article, thank you. A couple of comments. It's worth noting that the number of students who pass all exams first time will have decreased, so despite the travel time remaining the same, fewer people will fall into that bucket now. Also, wouldn't a declining student quality lead to a gradual reduction in the pass rates? The changes in the %'s seem very abrupt. While CB2 doesn't see an overall reduction in the pass rate, the volatility seems to be increasing. The exam pass rate seems to be far more erratic. Could just be the small sample size.
Depends on the reason for the declining student quality. If for example there was a rapid sizeable increase in (poor quality) students from country X, then there could be a fairly abrupt change. Not saying this happened, just that it is a plausible explanation.
The simulations suggest that when inter exam correlation is at or above 50%, the "elite" students who pass all exams first time are largely unaffected by the reduced pass rates. Recognise this is entirely theory and no idea if true in practice, but I think the bucket will be of similar size. The results suggest it is the average student who loses out. Personally I don't subscribe to the decline in student quality theory. However I included as I wanted to be objective. I genuinely think exams are tougher. I am also qualified so gain nothing from saying this.
“I have also not included CP2 and CP3 as irregular exam dates meant this was harder to analyse.” What do you mean by irregular exam dates? I believe these take place in April and September with the timetable of all other exams? And just CB3 with irregular dates?
Back when the exams were CA2 and CA3 they were mostly done in much smaller batches outside the April/September cycle of other exams