<p>Hello, I plan on majoring in actuarial science at Bing next fall. So it's pretty much a math major with a focus on actuarial science and economics courses.</p>
<p>I was just wondering how is the math department at Bing? Professors with heavy accents? Is it a good program? I'm looking forward to learning a lot in math, don't really care too much for any other classes.</p>
<p>Hi,</p>
<p>My name is Rob and I’m a Binghamton University Student Ambassador. I’m also an actuarial sciences and financial economics double major.</p>
<p>We do have some foreign professors within the department. I took a class with one that had a fairly strong accent, but he was very aware of that fact and encouraged students to slow him down or ask him to repeat himself if he couldn’t be understood. He didn’t get offended by this. Because of his awareness of the situation, I never had any problems with his accent. The times when I had to ask him to repeat himself weren’t that often, either.</p>
<p>Our actuarial sciences program here is really good, especially when you get into the upper-level courses. I’m not sure how far you’ve gotten into looking into the profession, so let me know if I need to elaborate further on the following. We offer classes that cover the material for exams 1/P, 2/FM, 3F/MFE (which we just added this semester), MLC and part of 3L (passing MLC exempts you from 3L, but not the other way around, so you’d probably want to take MLC either way), and some of 4/C. That alone is enough to get you through what is considered to be the preliminary exams, with the exceptions of some of the parts of 4/C. That’s pretty advanced for a Bachelor’s program in actuarial sciences. I’ve seen some universities that have Master’s programs that barely match that.</p>
<p>Switching into actuarial student mode here for a second - here’s some extremely important general advice for you going into your undergraduate education. Do not let yourself fall behind in any of the lower math classes. If you slack in Calculus I, you’ve already failed your actuarial exams. Without a very good knowledge of calculus up through Calc III, you cannot succeed on any of the actuarial exams (except maybe 2/FM, but for that you’d still need through Calc I and half of Calc II at least). If you’re confused with anything in those lower-level courses, seek help from a professor immediately. We have a Calculus Help Room run by the Math Department at Binghamton that let’s students get help from a professor at pretty much all normal business hours - you don’t have to wait for your professor’s office hours. We also offer free tutoring on-campus. Get help if you even start to need it. You don’t want to have to add the material of Calc I, II, and III to the list of things you have to study for your first exam when you start studying.</p>
<p>Sincerely,
Rob Clark</p>