Actuarial Studies (1 Viewer)

[ilovemathsmeth]

I am in year 12 this year and am keen to pursue Actuarial Studies at Melbourne University. However, I have heard that it is considered to be one of the most difficult courses at uni, and there is a very high failure rate. I am a bit apprehensive to take it for those reasons.

I really really love Maths so therefore think I would enjoy doing the course. I am just concerned about whether it is really very hard to do well in the Actuarial Studies subjects?

 

[gcspsp]

Well the first year subjects (maths subs in particular) have specialist has a pre-requisite, so unless you're considering doing calculus 1 and 2 in summer semester or something...you might not meet the pre-reqs.

check here

Linear algebra requires SS > 27 in spesh

Acc maths 1&2 require SS > 38 in spesh


If you're packing any of that ^^^^ then you're set for the course.

 

[RDX]

The drop out rate is pretty huge for Actuarial Studies. Its a grind! First year isn't too bad though from what I've heard, but judging from your methods score you should be alright.

 

[han-]

its not that difficult, if you put some work into it or have natural smarts

you should be taking spesh if you wanna do it though....

 

[ilovemathsmeth]

Hey - but I checked, it has a slightly different course for students who haven't done Specialist (like me), like they do Calculus 1 in semester 1, then Calculus 2 AND Linear Algebra in semester 2 in order to undertake Introduction to Actuarial Studies. I'm not worried in terms of pre-requisites because I've spoken to my careers counsellor and I've called up Melb Uni about it. It's just the drop out rate that freaked me out

 

[paperpromises]

I don't study Actuarial Studies but I'm doing a BCom and my breadth subjects are the Accelerated Maths subjects that most Actuarial kids take, so a bunch of my friends are doing Actuarial. Or were doing it. Yes, the dropout rate is fairly large - just from personal experiences probably about half of my friends who were doing Actuarial in first year have dropped out now that it's second year.

From what I've seen, first year isn't exactly undoable but it's not easy - the course is very rigid in terms of what subjects you have to take, and while some aren't hard (Intro Micro/Macro, Accounting subjects, basically the standard ones from the Faculty of Commerce) there were a few that seemed to cause most people some grief - the Maths ones and Intro to Actuarial. The latter especially; a lot of my friends did much worse than they expected, and some dropped out because I think they underestimated how tough it'd be.

Then and again it may be that my friends aren't the smartest cookies and/or didn't work hard enough and that's why they found it tough

Regardless though - once you get to mid second year-ish it's pretty hard to change majors if you want to drop out of Actuarial so just make sure you think it through!

 

[SmartAndKnowsIt]

I'm a third year Actuarial student myself. I’d be lying if I pretended it wasn’t a difficult course, but if you enjoy it then it can be really rewarding. A lot of people do drop out and even the ones who get through (myself included) are in no way guaranteed great marks. After the first year you can easily switch majors and while it’s hard to do well in some first year subjects you should still be able to pass. That said, if you do drop out even towards the end of second year you can switch to Finance without too much trouble.

Not having done Specialist mathematics shouldn’t be a problem. While they may get you to do the easier mathematics in first year and expect you to do reasonably well to qualify for the higher subjects it’s something I’ve seen others do. Even some people who’ve done Specialist have to take a (quite easy) test when they first arrive to qualify for the harder subjects.

I’ve seen how boring easy subjects can become (Organisational Behaviour is by far the worst subject I’ve ever had to take as well as being the easiest) and so will advise you not to fear a challenge. If Actuarial studies is something that you want to do then I’d definitely suggest you at least try it.

 

[ilovemathsmeth]

Thank you all for replying!

Do you know if its got good job prospects/is well paid?

 

[RDX]

Thank you all for replying!

Do you know if its got good job prospects/is well paid?

yeah good pay definitely, as for prospects not 100% sure.

 

[dvse]

Check out my posts in the "do not do actuarial studies" thread. Actuarial studies teaches you no advanced mathematics at all and you absolutely must do a maths degree if you want to see real maths (and even then from 3rd year onwards, most likely).

In fact, actuarial profession has fallen at least 30 or 40 years behind the times, if you want an interesting technical job in finance you want to acquire a skill set required of "quantitative analysts", actuarial gets you about 10% of the way there.

Of course, we have to keep in mind the appalling grade inflation in most other university courses, so actuarial looks hard by comparison because they have the Institute monitoring the standards for which a credit grade is awarded and so have remained relatively immune.

 

[Studentleader]

In fact, actuarial profession has fallen at least 30 or 40 years behind the times

I would have thought ~70 years

 

[Ben1220]

Check out my posts in the "do not do actuarial studies" thread. Actuarial studies teaches you no advanced mathematics at all and you absolutely must do a maths degree if you want to see real maths (and even then from 3rd year onwards, most likely).

In fact, actuarial profession has fallen at least 30 or 40 years behind the times, if you want an interesting technical job in finance you want to acquire a skill set required of "quantitative analysts", actuarial gets you about 10% of the way there.

Of course, we have to keep in mind the appalling grade inflation in most other university courses, so actuarial looks hard by comparison because they have the Institute monitoring the standards for which a credit grade is awarded and so have remained relatively immune.

From your previous posts I assume when you talk about "real maths" you are talking about number theory, group theory or knot theory, topology , complex analysis or some other crazy topic in abstract algebra or analysis, or perhaps a focus on the fundamentals... hardcore axiomic set theory... catagory theory... maybe topped off with some combinatorics...

If so, you're probably right, it would take a lot of motivation for the typical aspiring actuary to mess around with... say commutative algebra or enumerative combinatorics for years though...

 

[dvse]

From your previous posts I assume when you talk about "real maths" you are talking about number theory, group theory or knot theory, topology , complex analysis or some other crazy topic in abstract algebra or analysis, or perhaps a focus on the fundamentals... hardcore axiomic set theory... catagory theory... maybe topped off with some combinatorics...

If so, you're probably right, it would take a lot of motivation for the typical aspiring actuary to mess around with... say commutative algebra or enumerative combinatorics for years though...

It's not quite what I mean - what I am saying is that technically you will learn very little in an actuarial degree, most of it is confused and hopelessly outdated. The goal of education should be to get a foundation which allows you to easily learn new things under a wide variety of circumstances. Actuarial does not provide such basis, whereas maths does to some degree.

With maths if you understand fundamental things (say linear algebra along the lines of this: http://books.google.com.au/books?id...&resnum=2#v=onepage&q=kostrikin manin&f=false as opposed to what goes by the same name in "mathematical methods for engineers"), applied things (like regression) become completely trivial. On the other hand if you were taught about regression in an econometrics or even stats class, you will probably never fully grasp what's going on.

What is especially surprising is the ongoing misconception that actuarial has anything to do with mathematics... it really doesn't - modern mathematics is a vastly different subject. If someone is interested in maths, that's what they should do, or at least a double degree if for some reason they want to work in insurance later.