Actuarial major and career Q&A

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Acturial major is one math major with actuary study as concentration. </p>

<p>To answer your questions, I will focus on 2 parts: School and career. </p>

<li>School:
The courses requirements are generally like math major:
Lower Division:</li>
<li>Single variable & Multi-variable Caculus (generally called calculus I, II, III) (~2years)</li>
<li>Linear Algebra (Matrix operations and manipulation)</li>
<li>Differential Equation</li>
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<p>Upper Division:

  1. Probability (usually a series of 2 courses)
  2. Linear algebra (yes, harder, more proofs and less computations)
  3. Actuarial math (a series of 2 or more courses)
  4. Bunch of other electives math</p>

<li>Career:
To get started in actuary profession, college degree is not enough. You need to pass what so called–actuarial exams. The profession divide into 3 parts: Life actuary, casualty actuary, and the other one (please correct me if i’m wrong here). </li>
</ol>

<p>Exam
For each one division, they have roughly 9 exams for you to pass to be their fellow. 2 beginning exams are: Probability, Finance math followed by actuarial modeling and so on to very specific topics. You need to pass at least exam 1 to have opportunity to get your foot in the door. </p>

<p>salary
Generally starting off about ~47k-63k and 1 more exam passed=5k more. It increases with years of experience as well. It can go all the way up to ~150k. This profession seems to be growing pretty well recently. For more information: salary</p>

<p>Advices</p>

<h2>The exams are extremely hard to pass because of their difficulty. You need to be mentally prepared together with your intense studying. Also, you should choose this career path if you really enjoy doing quantitative analytical work and you are also good at it so it is a combination of interest + knowledge. However, many who work in this profession enjoy their jobs very much. From what I heard and read, i remember that actuary is ranked #2 for job satisfaction nationally. </h2>

<p>Little about me: Graduated math student from UCLA with 1 actuarial exam (probability) passed and currently studying industrial engineering in graduate school.</p>

2

<p>*Q1: Can i be a math major and then become an actuary? *
Yes, this is indeed the most frequent way that actuary take. </p>

<p>*or do you need to take another major *
No, you do not "need" to take another major but you can "choose" to take another major. However, if you want to get into this profession, you need to pass a lot of exams that require math skills so it is general advice that you should major in something related to math or statistics or economy or finance. </p>

<p>i know there's a test (according to another thread) that you need to pass after your undergrad four years
Yes, that is right! Please refer to my earlier thread.</p>

3

<p>bump... i'm available these days to answer questions regarding this actuarial major!</p>

4

<p>lol...people are scared of this career path.</p>

5

<p>Yes, that is understanable because this career path seems to be very tough than many other professions especially in the sense that actuaries are constantly learning new concepts and apply them in their work. </p>

<p>The exams difficulties are increasing exponentially from the first to the last one. I'm in an engineering graduate program but I still feel that the actuarial exams are much harder to pass than the engineering exams at graduate level. </p>

<p>One thing I can be very sure is that actuaries are very smart people mentally and intellectually!</p>