The CAS has announced the formation of a new exam that will replace Exams LC and ST as well as the Stats VEE. The transition rules are somewhat complicated, so I’m just going to boil down exactly what I think you should do about this transition.
Drop everything and do whatever you have to do to pass LC (or ST) in Spring 2015.
If you have already passed LC (or ST) or if you can pass LC (or ST) in the Spring of 2015, then you will have two more chances after that to pass the ST (or LC) exam and avoid Exam S altogether.
Why avoid exam S if possible?
Roughly one-third of the syllabus material for exam S has never been tested. That means we will all know very little about what kinds of exam problems to expect on that portion of the exam until the exam has been released a few times. Of course, I’d say that about almost any new material, but in this case this situation is more dire because the new material consists primarily of problems that you would never choose to work on in the real world without a software tool. That makes it much more difficult to write questions for, and of course, more difficult to predict what kinds of questions will be asked.
Next, the material for the exam comes from three or even four pretty different areas. We’ll see some of the material from LC, most of the material from ST, and the two new topics of Generalized Linear Models and Time series analysis. Even if the individual questions on the exam turn out not to be so difficult, it will be challenging to hold all these topics together in your mind at the same time with enough mastery to be able to do them all well. Having the chance to learn and demonstrate your learning on these topics separately via LC, ST, and the VEE seems like a better option. Each of these separately is a task not unlike preparing for the first few preliminary exams, while doing them all together in exam S seems more like preparing for the other ACAS exams CAS 5 and CAS 6.
Why LC for Spring 2015? Because LC has the shortest syllabus with the most predictable problems. Putting your effort into passing LC before the Summer 2015 deadline will give you the best chance to avoid dealing with exam S.
An argument can also be made for choosing ST instead of LC for Spring 2015. If you do pass LC in the spring, then you will only have two chances left to pass ST, and ST is a bit more challenging than LC. If you were to not be able to pass ST in either Fall 2015 or Spring 2016, then you would be out of luck on the transition and would have to take exam S anyway. If you try to take ST in Spring 2015 and pass, you’d have two chances to pass LC after that with great hope for success, and if you don’t pass ST in Spring 2015, then you’d already know at that point that you have to take exam S and you could start preparing yourself for that. Depending on how you feel about having just two chances to pass ST, this path may be a more comfortable one for you, but also gives you a great chance to avoid dealing with the new syllabus for exam ST.
This blog post was written by Lee Gibson, Ph.D. Lee is our instructor for Exam ST. Find his original version of this blog post on our Exam ST blog here. Find out more about our Exam ST and Exam LC products.