Someone recently asked a question that I’m sure many of you have thought about too:
There are times in the seminar where Eddie instructs us to not worry too much about some section of material because any question the SOA asks would go “beyond what you could realistically do with a handheld calculator”.
Now that we are in a CBT setting with Excel – should we be ignoring this advice? Or has the SOA provided some guidance that would indicate that the problems asked would be workable with a handheld, and Excel is only really used to show work?
As you may have noticed, we are actively adding more Excel-based problems, and many of them involve calculations that would have been totally impossible with a handheld calculator. I think that’s the best we can do for now. Over time I plan to edit some of those audio comments in the lessons, but it’s going to take me a while. It just can’t happen overnight, especially with all the setbacks in timing this year.
As for guidance from the SOA, as of right now, there has been very little. We really need to see some sample problems from them and probably go through 1-2 exam cycles before we catch on to the pattern in CBT era.
For now, I recommend just learning as many of the concepts as you can and think of Excel has just a more complicated calculator for exam purposes. Also keep in mind that everyone is taking the same exam and subject to the same unknowns. Moreover, the source material itself rarely shows things in an Excel-like format, so there are no other sources that you could use to prepare you for the unknowns. It’s quite possible the SOA is still figuring out what they want to do as well.
So as I said, just do your best to use the information available (of which there is a lot!). The Excel-based exercises we’re adding will help you get comfortable with doing certain things the “Excel way,” but having a solid conceptual foundation will put you in the best position to succeed on the exam.