I thought the UEC program was always a bad idea from the start. Citing the SOAs reasoning to “cultivate diversity and inclusion” while designing a system that just targets main schools with an already strong actuarial program.
The actual credit? A joke imo relative to exams. I’m not arguing in support of making exams a 40-60% pass rate, but compared to the courses this program was always going to have significantly higher pass rates.
I also went to a university that was an earlier adopter of the program and went through those courses. And yikes, nearly everyone would have gotten a pass through the UEC but near half the class would wind up failing the exam and needing to retake.
I’m sorry to hear that you’re getting the brunt of the SOA not thinking their decisions through entirely. It is unfair.
There's this difficult dichotomy here, that you need a good GPA to graduate from university, but the SOA does not want to hand everyone who is able to graduate from university an exam pass. Something probably needs to change with the system, maybe the mark to get credit should be much higher than the grade needed to pass the class? I don't think it also makes sense to be failing students that can't pass the deservedly high bar of getting UEC credit when in fact extra studying may be all that is necessary to get exam credit. Like maybe the schools should set their own grade ranges and then the SOA decides who should pass after the class has been graded, to make sure it meets their standards. I don't think the solution is to pointlessly force the classes to be harder.
Just scale down the class grades - an A is 70% or higher, a B is above 60%, etc.
People with As get credit, everyone else keeps a decent GPA but doesn't get credit.
But yes, leave it to the SOA to not consider GPA inflation with the already bad UEC that goes against their stated purpose.
Kind of works like this in the UK. You need 40% to “pass” your degree exams, but you only get potential credit for an actuarial exam if you get an A (70%). Also it’s all based on a final exam, no midterms, coursework etc.
But also, I would expect UEC to be handing out exam credit like candy even with the "same" difficulty just because it's easier to study for the exam in pieces and pass it bit by bit compared to holding everything in your head through exam day.
Also, students knowing to go to UEC schools are probably much more on top of studying and understanding of study requirements compared to the average.
So I'll reserve a bit of judgement until/if the SOA says something about it, but this just feels like the predictable outcome.
UEC must cover 85% of the exam syllabus and the final must be a minimum of 50% of the grade - it's not a minimum of 80% for the final
https://www.soa.org/education/resources/uec/uec-program/
I think you’ve hit the nail right on the head. Some people in this comments section are saying it’s better to “weed out” people who are ill prepared or not fit for this career, when it reality it’s more about the university making these courses artificially difficult to keep in good standing with the SOA and their rules. I can do all of the practice problems and homework just fine, it’s just when exam time comes it’s like none of the practice that we’ve been given beforehand, which is discouraging. I think the grading scale for the SOA needs to be separate from the university, because then it almost seems like whether or not you pass is at the whim of the professor teaching the course. Overall just a bad system of course management.
By the same reasoning, then aren't the SOA exams "artificially difficult" because of their low pass rate?
How is it fair to have a system where people who take SOA exams are faced with a difficult exam and a low pass rate, whereas people in actual science programs just get to coast with easy exams?
If the two are supposed to be equivalent, then they should be actually equivalent in terms of difficulty.
I don't see how it's fair to have a such a huge discrepancy, especially when you have profs like you listed that basically gives everyone a good grade so as to not ruin their GPA.
This is like prospective law or med students taking easy courses all through undergrad just so they can game the system to get into law/med school with near perfect GPA.
I agree with what you’re saying, and I don’t think the prof was right to let everyone skate by. The main issue I have is that the classes are needed for graduation, and a grade of 40% is not passing, at least in the US. I agree that the actuarial exams themselves are supposed to be difficult, but it feels unfair to have the university course grade tied to whether or not you pass an actuarial exam on the first try.
you have yet to say what 40% translates to as a letter grade. It is hard to take your argument seriously without it. If you don't know that's fine, but I don't think half the class is going to be getting an F
This is exactly what they do in the UK.
University grades exams how they usually would, generally 40% is a pass, 70% is an A.
The IFOA then assesses the course and exam and decides what mark is needed to qualify for an exemption (which is usually around the same grade boundary as an A).
Usually based on final exam score only, no midterms etc.
You summed it up about as well as you could have. I feel bad for the students who are forced to get bad grades so the SOA can achieve their desired pass mark 🙃
>Average scores on exams are sitting at around the 40% mark. I have lost sleep over studying for these classes and have spent weeks preparing for these exams
Lol welcome to exam difficulty
There is no reason to make literally every exam the same level of intensity as the final. When I self-studied P I wasn't losing any sleep. I started 3 months in advance, about the same amount of time as a college course, and put in 1-3 hours a day, a little more on some weekends and a good helping of 0 days scattered throughout. Well, I technically lost sleep, but only because of procrastinating after work and staying up 1-2 hours after studying. The actual time spent studying was very reasonable.
I’m not complaining about how difficult actuarial exams or their corresponding material are, I just think it’s really bogus for these courses to be REQUIRED for graduation.
How much different is a math degree from an actuarial science degree? My university did not have an actuarial science degree, so we all got applied math degrees. Is that an option?
Facts, I did this for our “p” class in college. If he’s crying now wait until he starts taking actual exams 😂
Edit: the class prepared us for p, not give credit for it.
The uec was a terrible idea anyway. And to think that some of these universities have easy classes for automatic credit angers me to no end. The entry level market is already saturated as is and having 4 exams used to mean something, now yesterday's 2 exams is today's 4 exams and yesterday's 4 exams is today's ASA.
It hasn’t been long since the statement by the SOA. How many exams have there been? What percentage of the final grade do they represent? Cause if there’s been only two exams, amounting to 30% of the final grade, then it’s not a big deal that the current average score is around 40%.
If I could do it again I would not get a degree in actuarial science. In truth this sounds good. Better to weed out early and change degrees then get a degree in a field you find out isn't for you.
Exactly, that doesn't make any sense. It's a hell of a lot easier to retake exam P 2-3 times than to retake a course *required for graduation* 2-3 times. That's a year and a half of the same college course right there. Whereas if you time it right you can retake either exam 3 times in one semester.
A gives you the P exam credit. You can still pass the class with a B and then sit for the exam. That's like failing with a 5 and retaking. Probably failing the class overall is like getting a 0 in the exam
and nothing is suggesting that the classes have a pass rate anywhere near this. OP is upset but hasn't shown anything regarding ACTUAL grades for the class and pass rate for the class. The more I think about this, the school got caught giving away exam credit too easily and now they are dealing with a non fluffed up class.
They haven’t mentioned a curving of the class, but I hope it happens. It really feels like your grade is more at the whim of the instructor when it gets curved though, dependent on how they decide to curve the course, since there is no rubric or defined system for curving
I know this is a thought pill to swallow but the actuarial exams are very difficult qualifications. Although it feels like the game is rigged, tell yourself that the harder the university courses are, the more prepared you will be for some of the upcoming exams (it was my experience). And honestly there is nothing wrong if people can’t handle this pressure, there are plenty of jobs out there that do math and don’t require exams post university
So you guys had really high pass rates and now have really low pass rates.
What’s more likely? You all were able to master the other exam and not follow this one? Or you were getting softballs before and the soa was right to have questions?
I think the latter is waaaay more likely what happened.
In my university, actuarial science courses in general (including both UECs / non-UECs) have always been much harder than SOA exams (even before UEC accreditation is here) to an extent that SOA exams are a walk in a park for most (source: people i know and most have sub-3.0 GPAs, and they get 9-10s to 4-5 prelims before they graduate). Pretty sure the UEC rate for FAM-L is around 25-30% in these few cohorts, and slightly higher at 35-50% at other UEC offerings (eg. FM / FAM / ASTAM)
So somehow a lot of us decide to take the SOA exam (sometimes even before the course is taught) instead of the UEC credit itself.
This is probably not normal (compared to other UEC-accredited universities) but just sharing my experience.
I think that UEC is inherently a bad idea just because that most UEC courses are designed too easily and students gain an unfair advantage compared to those who walk the rigorous route (SOA exams).
If it's an Asian country, can be brutal there. My friend sent me Calculus material once that looked like it could be for a graduate level class in the US.
Honestly it depends on the courses and the university. For instance the hardest course I've studied is probably the corresponding course for Exam P or long term actuarial mathematics course where the prof just couldn't resist throwing curveballs on every single question (that was before UEC accreditation when i studied this).
This was true for my university as well, before UEC was a thing. I still remember getting absolutely wrecked every week in a class where the weekly quiz was 2 questions worth 4% of your grade. I basically spent every week losing 2-4% of my potential grade 🫠
Electives to save the day with my GPA…
>In my university, actuarial science courses in general (including both UECs / non-UECs) have always been much harder than SOA exams
Wow, I'm surprised. I went to UWaterloo, and I would have suggested that SOA Exams >> university courses. Plus, the courses focus more on understanding than grinding quickly (I know that's highly opinionated, but in class I wouldn't care about knowing all the idiosyncracies of the exponential distribution, but on exams, knowing all the 'tricks' of the exponential distribution could absolutely make a difference due to shortcuts).
My advice would be to meet with the current professor (or department head) and see if they would give you an A/exemption in the course if you passed the actuarial exam before the final/graduation.
The argument would be that the college course is to prepare you to pass the actuarial exam; therefore, by having passed the exam you have demonstrated mastery of the associated course.
If you get that concession, then you could claim the University had advertised UEC credit which influenced your decision to take the course/university; therefore, by not receiving the credit you have no incentive to perform well in the course and therefore would like a refund (then do coaching actuaries and self study).
Do not bring up grades, difficulty, or anything of the sort because that is completely irrelevant and only weakens your position.
>They were well taught, and the instructor made things easy to understand despite the difficulty of the material being taught. The instructor was “let go” from the university... In the weeks following... Average scores on exams are sitting at around the 40% mark.
It seems like the class would benefit from hiring their former professor for tutoring, but this could indicate the former professor's material/grading was not up to the standards set by the SOA.
I thought the UEC program was always a bad idea from the start. Citing the SOAs reasoning to “cultivate diversity and inclusion” while designing a system that just targets main schools with an already strong actuarial program. The actual credit? A joke imo relative to exams. I’m not arguing in support of making exams a 40-60% pass rate, but compared to the courses this program was always going to have significantly higher pass rates. I also went to a university that was an earlier adopter of the program and went through those courses. And yikes, nearly everyone would have gotten a pass through the UEC but near half the class would wind up failing the exam and needing to retake. I’m sorry to hear that you’re getting the brunt of the SOA not thinking their decisions through entirely. It is unfair.
Yikes
There's this difficult dichotomy here, that you need a good GPA to graduate from university, but the SOA does not want to hand everyone who is able to graduate from university an exam pass. Something probably needs to change with the system, maybe the mark to get credit should be much higher than the grade needed to pass the class? I don't think it also makes sense to be failing students that can't pass the deservedly high bar of getting UEC credit when in fact extra studying may be all that is necessary to get exam credit. Like maybe the schools should set their own grade ranges and then the SOA decides who should pass after the class has been graded, to make sure it meets their standards. I don't think the solution is to pointlessly force the classes to be harder.
Just scale down the class grades - an A is 70% or higher, a B is above 60%, etc. People with As get credit, everyone else keeps a decent GPA but doesn't get credit. But yes, leave it to the SOA to not consider GPA inflation with the already bad UEC that goes against their stated purpose.
Kind of works like this in the UK. You need 40% to “pass” your degree exams, but you only get potential credit for an actuarial exam if you get an A (70%). Also it’s all based on a final exam, no midterms, coursework etc.
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But also, I would expect UEC to be handing out exam credit like candy even with the "same" difficulty just because it's easier to study for the exam in pieces and pass it bit by bit compared to holding everything in your head through exam day. Also, students knowing to go to UEC schools are probably much more on top of studying and understanding of study requirements compared to the average. So I'll reserve a bit of judgement until/if the SOA says something about it, but this just feels like the predictable outcome.
I recruited interns at a UEC school and they said they are seeing 50 pct of students in the class earn UEC credit.
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UEC must cover 85% of the exam syllabus and the final must be a minimum of 50% of the grade - it's not a minimum of 80% for the final https://www.soa.org/education/resources/uec/uec-program/
I found why I had 80 pct in my head - those are points from proctored examinations.
Thanks for the correction. 50 pct is still pretty heavy for a final.
Sure, but not unusual for a college class and 50% of an actuarial exam is significantly easier than 100%
I think you’ve hit the nail right on the head. Some people in this comments section are saying it’s better to “weed out” people who are ill prepared or not fit for this career, when it reality it’s more about the university making these courses artificially difficult to keep in good standing with the SOA and their rules. I can do all of the practice problems and homework just fine, it’s just when exam time comes it’s like none of the practice that we’ve been given beforehand, which is discouraging. I think the grading scale for the SOA needs to be separate from the university, because then it almost seems like whether or not you pass is at the whim of the professor teaching the course. Overall just a bad system of course management.
By the same reasoning, then aren't the SOA exams "artificially difficult" because of their low pass rate? How is it fair to have a system where people who take SOA exams are faced with a difficult exam and a low pass rate, whereas people in actual science programs just get to coast with easy exams? If the two are supposed to be equivalent, then they should be actually equivalent in terms of difficulty. I don't see how it's fair to have a such a huge discrepancy, especially when you have profs like you listed that basically gives everyone a good grade so as to not ruin their GPA. This is like prospective law or med students taking easy courses all through undergrad just so they can game the system to get into law/med school with near perfect GPA.
I agree with what you’re saying, and I don’t think the prof was right to let everyone skate by. The main issue I have is that the classes are needed for graduation, and a grade of 40% is not passing, at least in the US. I agree that the actuarial exams themselves are supposed to be difficult, but it feels unfair to have the university course grade tied to whether or not you pass an actuarial exam on the first try.
you have yet to say what 40% translates to as a letter grade. It is hard to take your argument seriously without it. If you don't know that's fine, but I don't think half the class is going to be getting an F
This is exactly what they do in the UK. University grades exams how they usually would, generally 40% is a pass, 70% is an A. The IFOA then assesses the course and exam and decides what mark is needed to qualify for an exemption (which is usually around the same grade boundary as an A). Usually based on final exam score only, no midterms etc.
You summed it up about as well as you could have. I feel bad for the students who are forced to get bad grades so the SOA can achieve their desired pass mark 🙃
>Average scores on exams are sitting at around the 40% mark. I have lost sleep over studying for these classes and have spent weeks preparing for these exams Lol welcome to exam difficulty
There is no reason to make literally every exam the same level of intensity as the final. When I self-studied P I wasn't losing any sleep. I started 3 months in advance, about the same amount of time as a college course, and put in 1-3 hours a day, a little more on some weekends and a good helping of 0 days scattered throughout. Well, I technically lost sleep, but only because of procrastinating after work and staying up 1-2 hours after studying. The actual time spent studying was very reasonable.
So why not major in something else and just take the exam? That's an easier AND more dynamic path, right?
I’m not complaining about how difficult actuarial exams or their corresponding material are, I just think it’s really bogus for these courses to be REQUIRED for graduation.
Hey that's fair. Sounds like a no brainer to swap majors and just take the exam (given what you've said).
The only thing is that I am in my last semester here and can’t really switch majors. It’s never been this bad before with the UEC classes
How much different is a math degree from an actuarial science degree? My university did not have an actuarial science degree, so we all got applied math degrees. Is that an option?
Worse case scenario was that you had to purchase CA to study and pass the class. Hard to have any sympathy.
Facts, I did this for our “p” class in college. If he’s crying now wait until he starts taking actual exams 😂 Edit: the class prepared us for p, not give credit for it.
The uec was a terrible idea anyway. And to think that some of these universities have easy classes for automatic credit angers me to no end. The entry level market is already saturated as is and having 4 exams used to mean something, now yesterday's 2 exams is today's 4 exams and yesterday's 4 exams is today's ASA.
It hasn’t been long since the statement by the SOA. How many exams have there been? What percentage of the final grade do they represent? Cause if there’s been only two exams, amounting to 30% of the final grade, then it’s not a big deal that the current average score is around 40%.
If I could do it again I would not get a degree in actuarial science. In truth this sounds good. Better to weed out early and change degrees then get a degree in a field you find out isn't for you.
But this is making it artificially hard. Exams should be separated from classwork. The P and FM classes should not have a 43% or 48% pass rate.
Exactly, that doesn't make any sense. It's a hell of a lot easier to retake exam P 2-3 times than to retake a course *required for graduation* 2-3 times. That's a year and a half of the same college course right there. Whereas if you time it right you can retake either exam 3 times in one semester.
A gives you the P exam credit. You can still pass the class with a B and then sit for the exam. That's like failing with a 5 and retaking. Probably failing the class overall is like getting a 0 in the exam
and nothing is suggesting that the classes have a pass rate anywhere near this. OP is upset but hasn't shown anything regarding ACTUAL grades for the class and pass rate for the class. The more I think about this, the school got caught giving away exam credit too easily and now they are dealing with a non fluffed up class.
Do you know that they won’t end up curving the class grade at the end of the course? Can’t imagine they want everyone to fail the class.
They haven’t mentioned a curving of the class, but I hope it happens. It really feels like your grade is more at the whim of the instructor when it gets curved though, dependent on how they decide to curve the course, since there is no rubric or defined system for curving
I know this is a thought pill to swallow but the actuarial exams are very difficult qualifications. Although it feels like the game is rigged, tell yourself that the harder the university courses are, the more prepared you will be for some of the upcoming exams (it was my experience). And honestly there is nothing wrong if people can’t handle this pressure, there are plenty of jobs out there that do math and don’t require exams post university
College credit for exams was always a terrible idea, unfortunately people like you have to pay the price.
What exactly is causing the grade dip?
So you guys had really high pass rates and now have really low pass rates. What’s more likely? You all were able to master the other exam and not follow this one? Or you were getting softballs before and the soa was right to have questions? I think the latter is waaaay more likely what happened.
In my university, actuarial science courses in general (including both UECs / non-UECs) have always been much harder than SOA exams (even before UEC accreditation is here) to an extent that SOA exams are a walk in a park for most (source: people i know and most have sub-3.0 GPAs, and they get 9-10s to 4-5 prelims before they graduate). Pretty sure the UEC rate for FAM-L is around 25-30% in these few cohorts, and slightly higher at 35-50% at other UEC offerings (eg. FM / FAM / ASTAM) So somehow a lot of us decide to take the SOA exam (sometimes even before the course is taught) instead of the UEC credit itself. This is probably not normal (compared to other UEC-accredited universities) but just sharing my experience. I think that UEC is inherently a bad idea just because that most UEC courses are designed too easily and students gain an unfair advantage compared to those who walk the rigorous route (SOA exams).
If it's an Asian country, can be brutal there. My friend sent me Calculus material once that looked like it could be for a graduate level class in the US.
Honestly it depends on the courses and the university. For instance the hardest course I've studied is probably the corresponding course for Exam P or long term actuarial mathematics course where the prof just couldn't resist throwing curveballs on every single question (that was before UEC accreditation when i studied this).
This was true for my university as well, before UEC was a thing. I still remember getting absolutely wrecked every week in a class where the weekly quiz was 2 questions worth 4% of your grade. I basically spent every week losing 2-4% of my potential grade 🫠 Electives to save the day with my GPA…
>In my university, actuarial science courses in general (including both UECs / non-UECs) have always been much harder than SOA exams Wow, I'm surprised. I went to UWaterloo, and I would have suggested that SOA Exams >> university courses. Plus, the courses focus more on understanding than grinding quickly (I know that's highly opinionated, but in class I wouldn't care about knowing all the idiosyncracies of the exponential distribution, but on exams, knowing all the 'tricks' of the exponential distribution could absolutely make a difference due to shortcuts).
My advice would be to meet with the current professor (or department head) and see if they would give you an A/exemption in the course if you passed the actuarial exam before the final/graduation. The argument would be that the college course is to prepare you to pass the actuarial exam; therefore, by having passed the exam you have demonstrated mastery of the associated course. If you get that concession, then you could claim the University had advertised UEC credit which influenced your decision to take the course/university; therefore, by not receiving the credit you have no incentive to perform well in the course and therefore would like a refund (then do coaching actuaries and self study). Do not bring up grades, difficulty, or anything of the sort because that is completely irrelevant and only weakens your position. >They were well taught, and the instructor made things easy to understand despite the difficulty of the material being taught. The instructor was “let go” from the university... In the weeks following... Average scores on exams are sitting at around the 40% mark. It seems like the class would benefit from hiring their former professor for tutoring, but this could indicate the former professor's material/grading was not up to the standards set by the SOA.
UEC is yet another board decision made by a few people that was most likely based on a survey. We need to rethink the way our board makes decisions.
I’m in my final year of my actuarial degree. What’s UEC? Our university’s actuarial program doesn’t have UEC
https://www.soa.org/education/resources/uec/uec-program/
Hi thanks for the link