考P和FM心得和找实习工作

onlygs 发表于 2013-10-3 10:09
那这个学校的精算专业要有多烂？！

别的学校不知道，我们学校的精算课能转加拿大CIA和美国CAS的credit ...

美国所有提供act emphsis的学校VEE credit都能在北美CAS SOA转学分，基本上每个州稍微大一点的学校，甚至没有精算专业的，学校也都有转换VEE credit的课程。有的community college都有

zhuangrtr 发表于 2013-10-3 11:21
美国所有提供act emphsis的学校VEE credit都能在北美CAS SOA转学分，基本上每个州稍微大一点的学校，甚至 ...

well, i don't think you really know what i was talking about.
VEEs are the easy credits so that everyone can get it, and so-call VEE Exemptions.

As what I said, you should do some more readings to understand about the trends and history of the actuarial field, such as the topic I mentioned previously is University Accreditation Program. since I know that CAS has participated in UAP, this is a fairly new stuff, it is not weird if you do not know it.

and for the universities in Canada, not only waterloo has the top actuarial program,
at least i know another 6 universities offer specialist in act. sci. and waterloo is just one of them.

for the courses, in our school, at least 11 ACT courses are required plus another 4 advanced ACT courses, and 4 STA courses are required (for VEE),
there are 9 ACT courses in 400+ level, I do not see any students from stas. but not act specialist taking those courses, since they could not understand the material.

this reply is not just for you, but also for the people who want to know something more about canadian actuarial field.
btw, if you do not in act. stream, i do not see any reason canadian employers will hire you for coop/intern position, and this is the reality, not even mention about full-time job.

Carlyxxx 发表于 2013-10-3 11:05
我没打算回国，想在加拿大工作。所以不知道cfa和soa哪个比较容易在加拿大找工作。今天参加了一下学校的ca ...

well, i will say you'd better not put CFA and SOA in the same topic,

BACKGROUND:
they are in different fields, CFA specialized in financial sector, more on investment track.
SOA exams is for insurance industry, some of risk mgt (CERA), pension, and investment.
there is another sociaty called CAS for P&C side, and SOA is specialized in life side.
CIA (canada) accepts the credits gained from SOA/CAS.
all SOA/CAS/CIA have associate and follow two levels in terms of the title, such as ASA/FSA, ACAS/FCAS.

so, it doesn't make sense you compare two different fields, but some my personal understanding is just for your reference as below:
for CFA, if you have passed 2 levels, you do not need much work experience for entry level job, and job market is above fair. For any job in financial area in Canada, i would suggest you to take CSC, which is way easier than any above exams, and you will be ok to find the entry level job providing you have strong communication skills, yep, some IT background will be an asset (you could either take courses or self study).

for ASA, you do not expect to complete ASA in school, i will not talk about too much on this, as you may refer some other posts here. the most difficult thing is to find a coop/intern while you are in the school, maintain a high GPA will help, but mostly, your communication skills, I emphasize this a lot because this is the only thing employer is looking for. (since every students has 3.5 GPA, 2-3 exams passed, what makes them different? you can think about it).

all in all, if you want to stay in Canada, CFA is easier to find a job than actuarial exams,
but if you are in act. sci. and with some interns, you will have 95% opportunity to get a job before graduate.

onlygs 发表于 2013-10-3 22:36
well, i don't think you really know what i was talking about.
VEEs are the easy credits so that e ...

Since I don’t know a lot about Canada, what u said might be right in Canada. However, in US, it is not.

First of all, it is really hard to find an actuarial job or even internship in US. You said it is easy to find one in Canada for actuarial students, well, in US there is so many candidates and very few openings.

Secondly, most universities don’t provide a lot of advanced actuarial courses other than the courses prepare for preliminary exams and VEE credits. Most of universities provide student act specialist just as any other specialist and nothing special. In reality, very advanced actuarial courses are not really useful for a college student. Actually, most of the employers would just give u a entry level position for a college student.(I don’t know if Canada will provide a more advanced position for college student.) However, even the entry level positions are really hard to find for an international actuarial student.

Thirdly, above two reasons explains why the employers prefer the stat students and other Engineering and cs students. The entry-level position in actuarial sciences neither requires u has a lot of actuarial exams passed nor a really deep understanding in actuarial aspects. Mostly, u just does some data analysis and work on some modeling software. In this case, the actuarial students don’t have advantages.

Finally, I recommend u a book “Making The Grade, The Aspiring Actuary's Guidebook to Consistent Exam Success and Advancement in the Workplace”. Maybe after reading that, u can have a better understanding about what’s going on. I mean, for most of the acturial students who want to find a job in us, this book is helpful.
Again, like I said, u might be right in Canada, but in US is certainly not.   

just make my last comment to this post,
the advanced course doesn't mean a "high" level actuarial skill training,
it is more about actuarial practice, business case, and communication in the profession.

I can see why it is hard to get into actuarial in u.s., just b/c many students who are not in actuarial stream, but who want to earn more money and enter into actuarial job market, which is a sad thing.

people can earn more in statistics field than actuarial, but just do not believe this is true,
so they just want to take a shortcut, which is even worse.

I can not imagine that how come a cs or engineering student can get into actuarial field,
so far I have not heard any success story in Canada, except those who went back to school and took actuarial from the beginning.

Again, you may not know why people want to be an actuary, but just tell you the truth, only the people who really love this actuarial profession can stay, and for those who just want a good reputation or good salary, usually they quit early.

I hope years later that I still can see you post some actuarial topics here and not quit for whatever reason.
good luck!

onlygs 发表于 2013-10-3 23:07
well, i will say you'd better not put CFA and SOA in the same topic,

BACKGROUND:

Thanks for sharing the information, it's so helpful to me. By the way, does CSC mean Canadian Securities Course?  

Carlyxxx 发表于 2013-10-6 09:27
Thanks for sharing the information, it's so helpful to me. By the way, does CSC mean Canadian Secu ...

yep, absolutely

恩恩写的很好 加油了。。。。马上要考第一门了

分享，
备用

好深奥。。