Actuary

ted9308

Is there any actuaries of even anyone doing a degree a actuary and financial science??Is the maths content really hard??Like do you get an a1 in higher maths in your leaving to have any chance??

Jay P

Is it ok to bump this? This is something I'm quite interested in as well.

If someone could just give a general description of their job, their qualifications and the training they had to do it'd be great.

qwerty2

+1 Am looking into this area too so if anyone has any info, it would be greatly appreciated!

cwolf

I have completed a degree in actuarial maths. The roles of actuaries can vary quite a bit, and depend on the area they are employed in. Most trainee actuaries in Ireland will study for the exams of the Institute/Faculty of Actuaries - there are approximately 15 of these, although exemptions from some of these exams can be gained by completing appropriate uni degrees. Employers often give study leave to help those preparing for the exams.

Regarding the Leaving Cert. - it isn't necessary to get an A1 in maths to do well in an actuarial degree. Uni maths is quite different from leaving cert maths - some people come in with an A1 and struggle, others who got Bs do fine.

Plenty of useful info can be found here:

http://www.actuaries.org.uk/careers

jimmylawman

I did this some years ago so it may have changed since. I went in straight from school having got a pile of 'A's (including A1 in maths).

The options were you could go to college and do a maths (or maybe economics) degree or you could go straight from school. In terms of qualifiication you were no nearer being qualified coming in from degree than you were from school. There are a set of professional exams you must sit and you can start them at any age. You would need LC honours math as minimum background to make sense of the subjects but apart from that its self contained. Now you can do an Actuary course in UCD but it might get you a few exemptions but you still have to do the majority of exams anyway. The one advantage of doing the degree route is the life experience really, if you go straight from school you will have worked in an office from 18 - 65.

Some people are asking whether you need an A in honours maths. You may not strictly need it but I would say if you struggle with maths maybe this is not the career for you.

I found the work interesting at junior level (a lot of problem solving and some maths) but it seemed the higher you went the less interesting it got, more a general management type of path, which is probably a challenge for most professions. As it happened I ended up leaving it to work in IT (and am now thinking of changing career again, but that's another story )

misslt

I'm doing the degree in UCD at the moment.

It's different to secondary school maths - I did A-levels not LC so there were topics in the first semester I was unfamiliar with whilst LC people knew them and vice versa. It's statistics more than maths tbh, there are three maths modules in first year and three stats modules, however from second year on theres maybe only one maths module.

As for the exemptions, up until this year UCD offered 7 exemptions, out of 15 (CT1-CT7 I think), however if your average score for these 7 exemptions is above a certain point, they will award you with an eighth, CA1.

It's really interesting, not hard per se - like I said it's different to anything I'd done before and that threw me a little, but you just keep going and it's fine!

Don't worry too much if you don't get the A1 in maths, it won't make much difference in the long run, as I say the focus is on statistics more than maths, esp. after the first semester.

Shoves

I only did Pass Maths for Leaving Cert, then went back as a mature student to do a degree in Financial Maths and found it do-able. I found it tough enough in year 1, but I think that was more to do with the fact that I had worked for years and took a while to get back into study-mode.

One thing I would say when choosing Maths / Actuarial Science degree is check out the exemptions available first. Some courses only give you 1 exemption, while others you get all the CT's.

Richard Cranium

An important point to remember though is that you are only eligible for exemptions if you do a financial maths/actuarial science course in college. To actually get the exemption you need to do very well in the relevant modules- I'm not quite sure if it works the same everywhere, but in UCC anyway the mark you need to qualify for the exemption is generally much higher than the university's own pass mark.

tinkerbell

^^ Yep, exemption marks are usually at least 65%, some can be higher like in the 70s bracket. So if you're just scraping a bare pass of 40% then you definitely will not get an exemption in that subject.

PS
Actuary is a wonderful profession, I love it. Great job, great security, great pay, etc. etc. However, you have to work your ass off to get qualified, and that is really really tough. That is why you're paid the big bucks, well because it takes you so long to get qualified and then the actual line of work as well.

If you're not prepared to go to college for 4 years, get some exemptions and then work / study for at least 3 years (it takes most people 3 - 5 years to qualify) after, then don't bother. It's really really tough trying to work and study, and it does start to grate after a few years. You could be a qualified doctor in the same amount of time it can take you to qualify as an actuary.

And you gotta also learn to cope with failure. You may come out of college with all your exemptions and blah blah, never get a low mark. Then you do your first exam out of college with the institute and get a fail. Well you gotta just pick yourself up and move along. You could end up sitting the same exam over and over and over again for a few years (yes, this does happen), your motivation goes and you get frustrated, you just gotta keep the end in sight, and just get on with it. All about building character!

Anyway, at the end of the day, it is well worth it, and I'm delighted to have chosen it as my career. I love my job, but it was really hard getting there. So just make sure you are ready for all that, it requires a lot of dedication and commitment, and if you have neither of those - then you'll never succeed in this profession.

bola

@ tinkerbell. Would you mind listing your job description and examples of how one can progress in the actuarial career?. also will these degree be helpful to young entrepreneurs and those interested in the stock markets?. Thanks for the reply