actuary

dddkev12

im currently thinking of going to ucd to study actuary but i am unsure whether i will be able for the course. can anyone tell me what the course is like and is it enjoyable

**Timbuk2**

I'm in second year of it at the moment, and I love it!

In first year, you do 3 maths modules (Linear Algebra and Geometry, Numbers and functions, and Differential and Integral Calculus), two statistics modules (one is really just a follow on from the other), two computer programming modules (the language we learned was C++, but different years often do different languages), introductory Micro and Macro-economic modules, and an accounting module.

There's only around 40 in the class, so everybody gets to know everybody quick enough, and UCD itself is a great place, with great lecturers!

1st year isn't too bad in terms of difficulty of work. 2nd year is quite a step-up, but if you're willing to work hard, and like maths/finance, you should be ok!

The good thing about the Actuarial course in UCD is that you can gain exemptions (that is, you don't have to take as many exams after you graduate as people entering the actuarial profession from scratch - and those exams are tough to pass!). There's 15 core exams an actuary has to sit (usually sitting about 2 or 3 a year), but you can potentially get 9 exemptions from doing this 4-year degree in UCD (about 50% of the class will graduate with all the exemptions, the remaining half will graduate with SOME of the exemptions, but not all of them!).

Certain modules count towards actuarial exemptions (the idea being, that if an actuarial exam is based on a certain topic, doing 3 or 4 modules based on this topic in college will cover all this material in depth, so if you do well enough in those, you will have been exempted from the exam, meaning you don't have to sit it - you have effectively 'passed').

The more exemptions you have, the more employable you will be, and the higher your starting salary (like all jobs, starting salaries are low, but increase with experience, and in the case of actuaries, as you pass exams). But it requires a lot of work to get these exemptions - you don't just need to pass the modules, you really need a minimum of a B+ on average between exemption modules to qualify for the exemption. The good news is, only 3 out of 12 modules in first year count towards exemptions (micro and macro economics, and accounting). But from 2nd year onwards, most modules count towards exemptions!

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask, or PM me.
Don't just consider UCD though - DCU also doing Actuarial Maths, as do Queens in Belfast, as do many colleges in the UK, so if you're in 6th year now, get applying to UCAS as well!

dddkev12

thanks for all the info, really aprreciate it. just couple more questions:
how many hours of lectures are there each week roughly and whats the work load like - is it mostly study, assignments etc. and finally just wondering what level of maths you would need for this course ie do you need to be agenious or can you pick up the course content if you work hard. thanks:)

WoodsyD

I've been working at it a few years since college. Don't need to be a maths genius, but you should at least have the ability to get an a1 even if you don't end up getting one. I'd suggest going into an office for some experience for a day (eg mid term/Easter) to see what the job is like. It's all calculations alright but we don't use differential calculus, it's +-x\ most of the time.

**Timbuk2**

dddkev12 wrote: »

thanks for all the info, really aprreciate it. just couple more questions:
how many hours of lectures are there each week roughly and whats the work load like - is it mostly study, assignments etc. and finally just wondering what level of maths you would need for this course ie do you need to be agenious or can you pick up the course content if you work hard. thanks:)

In terms of hours per week, it's pretty much like any other course, and has about 22-24 hours a week of lectures/tutorials/labs, but you have to allow time for studying of course! I only know about UCD, but I imagine DCU is something similar!

As for ability, as the above poster said, you'd want to be a high B or A student in honours maths, as the maths is quite tough in this course, especially from second year onwards.

You don't need to have done economics or accounting for the leaving cert, but those subjects are taught in first year (of the UCD course, anyway), but assuming you haven't done them for the LC, so you won't be lost if you haven't done the subjects - I didn't do economics for the leaving but got on fine with Micro and Macro economics.

Getting into an actuarial course isn't *too* tough because there's a good bit of choice, and unlike something like primary teaching or medicine, there's a good bit of variation of points.

UCD varies in points between 530-550, in 2009 it was 530, in 2010 it was 545, in 2011 it was 535.
DCU varies in points usually between 490-510, so a bit lower. The Actuarial Mathematics course in DCU is more or less equivalent, but DCU offer 8 exemptions from the actuarial exams, whereas UCD offer those 8 exemptions plus an extra one (called the Core Applications 1 exam, which is a tough one to pass, so it's handy to have the exemption in it). But don't let this be the deciding factor, not everyone gets *all* the exemptions, it's possible to graduate with some of the exemptions (e.g. 6), so don't go to UCD just because there's a possibility of getting an extra exemption, if you really want DCU.

There's also a course in DCU called something like "Common entry to actuarial, applicable and financial maths" which has even lower points again (around 430/440 from the top of my head", and you sit in the exam same lectures for the first 2 years as the actuarial students, and after 2nd year, if your grades are good enough, you can 'stream' into the Actuarial Maths course.

And definitely consider applying for UCAS - I applied for Queens in Belfast, and Herriot-Watt in Edinburgh!

ele19

Me too! i'm thinking of applying for the same course! Very excited, LOVE maths, repeating the LC with a much clearer head on what i want to do! I previously got a B1 in maths and am trying to get my grade up to an A. Does anybody know if there is much of a difference between actuarial and financial studies in UCD or actuarial studies in DCU??:)

WoodsyD

There's not too much difference (I think, I went to dcu). Both cover the same ct exams, the ucd one does ca1 as well which is an advantage. The non core subjects in dcu are more maths based (with ucd, they're a bit more like business studies subjects and maybe therefore more practical). But I've never got the impression one was better than the other (and I know loads of people from each).

misslt

I'm in 3rd year now in UCD.

The second semester of 3rd year is minimum 6mths work placement, so you have only one semester of college. So I think the lecturers are trying to force 2 semesters of work onto us in 12 weeks :P

3rd year you do Survival Models (mortality etc - used in Life insurance), Stochastic Models (used for general insurance), Time Series (a closer look at a specific form of stochastic process), Advanced Corporate Finance, Management Information for Actuaries and your elective - I'm doing Insurance Regulation.

The first 3 are your exemption models. Stochastic and Survival in particular are quite similar - you take the same concepts and apply them to different things.

Management info is, to be honest, useless - I'm still not sure what we're supposed to get from this course and we're in week 11

Finance is finance - a lead on from Principles of Finance in second year.

My elective, as I said, is Insurance Regulation - very useful and informative for someone wanting to be an Actuary! Won me a lot of brownie points in the interviews for placement, able to talk about things like Solvency II etc. Other recommended electives are International Monetary Economics, and things like that.

I have to say I love third year. Its tough. Very tough - in the sense that the workload is very intense. I still have 4 term assignments outstanding going into the last week of term. The subject matter itself isn't overwhelmingly difficult - I can finally see what we're doing now building on what we did previously.

I can only speak for UCD but I hope its of some help

yournerd

I was thinking of Law and Business but this course sounds really good!! Can you get a job as an actuary straight away or do you have to do extra trainng somewhere else?

**Timbuk2**

yournerd wrote: »

I was thinking of Law and Business but this course sounds really good!! Can you get a job as an actuary straight away or do you have to do extra trainng somewhere else?

Usually you can get a job as a trainee actuary, but it takes many years after you finish the degree to become fully qualified.

You have to pass quite a number of exams to become an actuary, doing this degree means you get exemptions so you'll have to do less of them, but there's still a lot left to do, and they are tough, and have very high fail rates, and most actuaries take quite a number of years to pass these (if you fail, you just keep retaking the exam until you pass). The 'good' thing is that you are working while studying for these exams, and while this means it's much harder to balance work/study/leisure into a week of limited hours (although you might get a few days for the purposes of study off approaching any professional exams), you do get paid and have an income, even as a trainee actuary. The more exams you pass, the higher it gets (by a small amount!).

I'm not sure if it's anything to go by, and I certainly wouldn't go picking a degree based on employment rates (do what you like, not what you don't like but think is employable), but the Wall Street Journal released statistics about degrees and their corresponding unemployment rates:
http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/#term=

Actuarial Science is quoted as having a 0.0% unemployment rate. I would take the figure with a pinch of salt, being honest, but either way, actuaries tend to be in demand, even those that are graduating from degrees these days (with high unemployment in Ireland), most are still managing to find work.

tinkerbell

A career as an actuary is a great choice. Do a search on here for actuary and you will find loads of posts on it - I have posted a lot of info on actuary on boards from what you do in college, exams, the work, etc.

It is very tough. Prepare to do a lot of work for it, both in college and once you are working as a trainee actuary. You think college is tough trying to pass exams? Try having to work full time as a trainee and also study for exams at the same time. Yes you get study days but it is exhausting. You have to be dedicated to finally qualify. And you have to be prepared to accept failure. You might go through your Leaving Cert with As all over the place, but not do great in your college exams. Or you might sail through college but then fail the exams when you're working. The exams have a high failure rate - the number of people who pass any particular exam can be anywhere between 30% to 60% usually, so be prepared to have to sit exams more than once before you pass.

Actuaries are very well paid so it is a very rewarding career. It's tough to get there but once you are, it is well worth it. I'm not trying to be negative or to scare you, it's just so you know what to expect. It's hard work but it is so worth it. I'm qualified myself so if you've any questions ask away.

misslt

tinkerbell wrote: »

A career as an actuary is a great choice. Do a search on here for actuary and you will find loads of posts on it - I have posted a lot of info on actuary on boards from what you do in college, exams, the work, etc.

It is very tough. Prepare to do a lot of work for it, both in college and once you are working as a trainee actuary. You think college is tough trying to pass exams? Try having to work full time as a trainee and also study for exams at the same time. Yes you get study days but it is exhausting. You have to be dedicated to finally qualify. And you have to be prepared to accept failure. You might go through your Leaving Cert with As all over the place, but not do great in your college exams. Or you might sail through college but then fail the exams when you're working. The exams have a high failure rate - the number of people who pass any particular exam can be anywhere between 30% to 60% usually, so be prepared to have to sit exams more than once before you pass.

Actuaries are very well paid so it is a very rewarding career. It's tough to get there but once you are, it is well worth it. I'm not trying to be negative or to scare you, it's just so you know what to expect. It's hard work but it is so worth it. I'm qualified myself so if you've any questions ask away.

How long did it take you to qualify and did you have any exemptions after your degree? If so how many?

I hope you don't mind my asking, I'm afraid I may have missed out on CT1 and CT5 (I think - probability and inferential statistics). I am still in with a chance of the blanket exemption UCD offers (CT1-8 and CA1) but if I don't get that I'll have to sit CA1 and CA5 again, I'm just wondering will this have a huge impact. I've looked at the papers and they don't seem too bad - very similar to what we did in college, and I still have all my material, so I'm hoping I should be able to get them fairly quickly!

Out of all the exemptions UCD offer the one I really want (and would be content if that was the only one I got :P ) is CA1, I've heard its horrendous. Did you pass it first time?

And also CT9 and CA 2&3 aren't exams, is that right? They're courses of some sort? How are they organised and where and when? Haha!

Sorry for the 20 questions :P

tinkerbell

It can take any amount of time to qualify. It is different for everyone. Some people fly through the exams, other people take years to get through them. It really depends on how many exemptions you have coming out of college and how well you do in your exams once you start working. There are people who have come out of college with 8 exemptions, yet have qualified slower than people with less exemptions. It depends on how quickly you get through them. Some people get stuck on an exam for multiple sittings, others sail through.

The work experience requirement is still three years though as far as I know so it takes a minimum of 3 years before you can qualify.

The exams that you may have missed out on, just do them when you get out of college. I don't know what you mean by "will this have a huge impact".

CA1 is not horrendous. I passed it first time. The reason people tend to fail it and get stuck on it for multiple exam sittings is because they are not doing enough study for it. CA1 is two papers and the size of the notes is equivalent to two STs. You have to treat it like that and do enough study for it. There are other exams which are way more difficult to pass than CA1.

You don't need to worry about CT9, CA2 and CA3 for now. You can't do CA2 or CA3 until you have all your CTs and CA1 (I think) passed first. As for CT9, you usually don't do that until you have been working 12 months. They are exams organised by the Institute.

tinkerbell

tinkerbell wrote: »

You think college is tough trying to pass exams? Try having to work full time as a trainee and also study for exams at the same time. .

And the pass mark required in the actuarial exams is higher than college and they won't tell you what it is

iliketorun

Hi, I finished college this year with a maths degree. am doing an internship in the USA for all of 2012(will be looking for job as soon as I get there). I have been confused about what I want to do for the future since I finished the finals nearly 7 months ago now. Now, I think actuarial work could be for me if I can survive all the exams lol. Pure maths and computational stuff never made the slightest bit of sense to me whatsoever, but I enjoyed statistics, its methods and applications and statistical mechanics. I had to study very hard for them but at the same time I actually really enjoyed studying them. It felt great when something finally made sense to me.
Most of the stuff I learned has slipped my mind at this stage but I would love to get back into it, my brain hasn't been doing much work the past 7 months lol. I was wondering if anyone could recommend any books I could get that would be useful for actuarial maths? Its probably an unusual Christmas present but I would like to get a few from my family. At least that way, when I start studying for exams, I will be in a better position. I appreciate any recommendations and will look for them as soon as I can.
Thanks.

Yakuza

tinkerbell wrote: »

A career as an actuary is a great choice. Do a search on here for actuary and you will find loads of posts on it - I have posted a lot of info on actuary on boards from what you do in college, exams, the work, etc.

It is very tough. Prepare to do a lot of work for it, both in college and once you are working as a trainee actuary. You think college is tough trying to pass exams? Try having to work full time as a trainee and also study for exams at the same time. Yes you get study days but it is exhausting. You have to be dedicated to finally qualify. And you have to be prepared to accept failure. You might go through your Leaving Cert with As all over the place, but not do great in your college exams. Or you might sail through college but then fail the exams when you're working. The exams have a high failure rate - the number of people who pass any particular exam can be anywhere between 30% to 60% usually, so be prepared to have to sit exams more than once before you pass.

Actuaries are very well paid so it is a very rewarding career. It's tough to get there but once you are, it is well worth it. I'm not trying to be negative or to scare you, it's just so you know what to expect. It's hard work but it is so worth it. I'm qualified myself so if you've any questions ask away.

Very well put. I started out as a actuarial trainee in the late 80s (no college courses back then) and it was tough going, even with the time off to study. The first time I ever failed an exam in my life was an Actuarial one, I was gutted .

@iliketorun: I packed in the exams in the mid 90s, having passed 4 out of the 10 there were at the time. I switched to an studying an BSc in Computer Science in the 90s but never regretted having done the exams (as I've spent most of my career in the insurance / financial sector) and I've even signed up to pick up the exams from where I left off (I've got 6 exemptions from the 15 that there are now) and I intend to at least finish the CT exams ("just" needing CT4,5 and 8) to get my Diploma in Actuarial Techniques. I may even finish them off, but I'm not putting myself under any pressure to do so. Having taken up the exams after 15 years, I'm finding the maths not that bad to get back into, so after 7 months you shouldn't find it that hard!

The combination of having solid IT skills and a half-baked actuarial background has been very useful to me, so even if you decide you don't want to finish it off, anything you do up to that point will stand to you.

Here's a link to some info: http://www.actuaries.org.uk/becoming-actuary/pages/student-membership

These guys supply the materials for the courses: http://www.acted.co.uk/ (they also do packs that cover the statistics and other mathematical techniques you need to get through the CT exams). I'm not sure if you have to be a student member of the Institute or not for them to sell to you, but I wouldn't think so.

aarond280

misslt wrote: »

I'm in 3rd year now in UCD.

The second semester of 3rd year is minimum 6mths work placement, so you have only one semester of college. So I think the lecturers are trying to force 2 semesters of work onto us in 12 weeks :P

3rd year you do Survival Models (mortality etc - used in Life insurance), Stochastic Models (used for general insurance), Time Series (a closer look at a specific form of stochastic process), Advanced Corporate Finance, Management Information for Actuaries and your elective - I'm doing Insurance Regulation.

The first 3 are your exemption models. Stochastic and Survival in particular are quite similar - you take the same concepts and apply them to different things.

Management info is, to be honest, useless - I'm still not sure what we're supposed to get from this course and we're in week 11

Finance is finance - a lead on from Principles of Finance in second year.

My elective, as I said, is Insurance Regulation - very useful and informative for someone wanting to be an Actuary! Won me a lot of brownie points in the interviews for placement, able to talk about things like Solvency II etc. Other recommended electives are International Monetary Economics, and things like that.

I have to say I love third year. Its tough. Very tough - in the sense that the workload is very intense. I still have 4 term assignments outstanding going into the last week of term. The subject matter itself isn't overwhelmingly difficult - I can finally see what we're doing now building on what we did previously.

I can only speak for UCD but I hope its of some help

Just wondering if while on the 6 month placement whether or not you get paid :P

oidhreacht

Yes, would be fully paid. It's also a useful way to figure out:

* what an actuary actually does
* if being an actuary is for them
* the area that they would see them working in after college

aarond280

oidhreacht wrote: »

Yes, would be fully paid. It's also a useful way to figure out:

* what an actuary actually does
* if being an actuary is for them
* the area that they would see them working in after college

Oh thats great thanks
Also i was wondering due to the extra 25 points for Honours Maths, will this mean an increase in 25 cao points for the course for college ??

oidhreacht

Everyone applying for actuary will have honours maths (I'm not sure if it's a requirement) so I'd guess it will go up by 25 points due to that factor alone.

However, other factors may then serve to either reduce or increase this difference from last year.

Like if there's less demand for actuarial courses then that would reduce the difference; so the total difference would depend on what your peers are doing.

aarond280

oidhreacht wrote: »

Everyone applying for actuary will have honours maths (I'm not sure if it's a requirement) so I'd guess it will go up by 25 points due to that factor alone.

However, other factors may then serve to either reduce or increase this difference from last year.

Like if there's less demand for actuarial courses then that would reduce the difference; so the total difference would depend on what your peers are doing.

Yeah that's what i was thinking, it could go down and the up or up and up again ah well thanks

Kadiv

Hi guys I was wondering how does employment and life compare of an actuary and that of a doc. Not sure between the 2 am applying to cao this year so don't know what do go for really but I really love math and app.math. Is it really that hard to get a job as an actuary after you graduate and does it have a bad employment perspective compared to a doc's

aarond280

As far as i know there is something like a 0% unemployment rate.

Pembily

aarond280 wrote: »

As far as i know there is something like a 0% unemployment rate.

Actuaries are hugely in demand. Any I know all have jobs and regularly have recruiters contacting them. It's a good profession if you're interested in it.

Colonel Sanders

Demand for experienced actuaries is phenomenal, especially in General Insurance

I'm not sure about graduate posts however. Maybe try get in touch with some people who are final year in UCD/DCU and find out?

Pythia

Colonel Sanders wrote: »

Demand for experienced actuaries is phenomenal, especially in General Insurance

I'm not sure about graduate posts however. Maybe try get in touch with some people who are final year in UCD/DCU and find out?

I am an General Insurance and the demand is crazy. They describe it as a 'shortage' of actuaries. We do indeed have recruiters ringing us up all the time. I don't know of anyone who is an actuary without a job.

Pembily

Colonel Sanders wrote: »

Demand for experienced actuaries is phenomenal, especially in General Insurance

I'm not sure about graduate posts however. Maybe try get in touch with some people who are final year in UCD/DCU and find out?

Demand for graduate actuaries is also high.