Exam P Study Manual 2012
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Hi all, I just passed exam p this morning (September-19-2015) and thought I would share some insights with folks. Personal background: math major in junior year.
Didn't take any stats or probability course before. GPA 3.96 Total studying time: I started watching Youtube videos to learn basic probability stuff in July but didn't start studying wholeheartedly until mid August. So I think my total study time was somewhere 120-150 hours. I searched online constantly for as much as suggestion and tips as I can get.
But it was hard because people ask very specific questions so the information is scattered around everywhere on the internet. So in this post I want to combine the tips I got from the internet and from personal experience. Personal insight of the how one can effectively study for exam p:. Study the Actex manual.
Actex Exam P Study Manual
(or any other manual that you found helpful.) Learn the majority of the content but when you bump into something the book says it doesn't show up on the real test often, skip it. Most people would suggest you to buy one but I found the 2009 version online for free.
I figured since I'm just learning the materials it wouldn't make much difference if using an older version. After you get a good idea of the test content, do SOA 1-130. Let me emphasize '1-130' not '1-240', because after 130 the questions get crazy. And trust me the real testing questions are unlikely to be that hard. So if you don't have unlimited study time, just make sure you can do SOA 1-130 even in your sleep.
Two weeks before your exam, buy Adapt, and do EL 3-5 practice exams. (DO NOT EXCEED EL 5) I passed exam P with only 5.28 EL, so seriously if you didn't get to a high EL before your sitting, don't worry too much about it.
The real exam seems like EL 3-4 on Adapt to me. Some people like to challenge themselves with harder problems and it definitely is good if you have A LOT OF time to study. But IMO, the real exam is not gonna be harder than EL 5, so why scare yourself unnecessarily? How I feel about real exam: Like many other posts have said, the real exam is about CONCEPTS. There most likely won't be questions that require time-consuming and troubling calculations.
It means to test if you know a certain concept or not. Most problems I saw on exam p were pretty straight forward. (By saying 'straight forward', I mean that after I understood the question, I had steps in my head of how to solve it right away. There was very little ambiguity. It is either 'you know this concept' or not.
So my overall suggestion is that, if you have very limited time to study and want to make the most out of your time, don't trouble/freak out yourself by doing really hard problems (like TIA practice exams). The real exam is to see if you know most of the concepts of probability and calculus (yes I had two problems that was basically testing if i know how to integrate a certain thing). The night before your exam: Instead of doing lots of problems, I would suggest to go over your formula sheet over and over again and make sure you know how to relate different concepts (e.g. Cov, conditional variance or conditional expectation).
Because I had very little time to study (taking five classes and have a part time job), I had to skip all the uncommon distributions, even gamma. (I figured if I did happen to see a gamma I would either give up or treat it as an exponential with tabular integration). And it turns out just fine.
What I'm trying to say is that if you just can't stuff ALL the materials in your brain, don't panick. Make sure you know those important stuff really, really, really well, and you should be fine. I'm sorry for making this post this long, but I hope it would help some people who are preparing for exam p.:).
ELECTRONIC Manual is DRM protected. Please be sure you can install Adobe Digital Editions FREE software and authorize the software to your computer/device using an Adobe ID of your choosing, prior to purchasing this material. DRM Restrictions include: 1 Year license, 30% printing (on primary device ONLY), No copying. This manual consists of 110 original questions and solutions from previous EA-1 workshops, and other questions made up by the author. The 2012 edition is identical to the 2011 edition. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: David Farber, A.S.A., E.A., M.S.P.A An actuary (Associate of the Society of Actuaries and an Enrolled Actuary) and educator who focuses on education in the retirement plan area. He has taught review courses for students studying to pass the Enrolled Actuary exams since 1983, and numerous courses geared towards retirement administrators and consultants since the early 1980s.
For errata & updates.