What being an actuarial student is really like

[Frozone]

I just completed my first year at the University of Melbourne, following the actuarial program. If anyone is hoping to pursue Actuarial Studies at Melbourne, I would gladly answer any questions/give advice/help you out with first year Actuarial Studies.

(Sorry OP for hijacking your thread)

What is the cohort like? small/large?
And would you say the atmosphere is supportive?

[pi]

Just wanted to add something (I was tossing up between this course when I was in yr12 and have followed it relatively closely since), I have heard from a course within the graduating cohort that only 5 people got offered actuarial jobs (this was early in the year) for 2015. Maybe more had been offered jobs since, but if so I don't think it was many.

Food for thought for anyone keen on this I guess.

[notveryasian]

What is the cohort like? small/large?
And would you say the atmosphere is supportive?

Around 170 or so people did the subject "Introduction to Actuarial Studies", which was the only subject in first year which reflected the amount of people doing the major. So I would stay the cohort is of a decent size, with a majority being international students. Generally university isn't a very supportive environment, since you normally have different class times than others and also since university places a greater emphasis on independent learning, which is very different to high school. But if you have or make friends with people in the same course you can definitely create a supportive environment between yourselves.

Pi is absolutely right. From speaking to Actuarial students in 3rd year and also a representative at Quantium, an Actuarial-based firm, I hear that getting an actuarial position after graduation is very competitive. Graduates would expect to work in others areas for a while or look interstate/overseas for an opportunity.

[Amity]

Hey hey, I figured I should weigh in here – I just finished my second year of actuarial at Melbourne. This will probably be long

We had just under 200 students in first year I believe, but 96 students in our financial maths II class this semester. I think the big drop actually occurred between semester 1 and 2 this year, after we sat our first proper actuarial exam. Probably one of the big things about actuarial is that the content may not be as difficult as pure maths for instance, but the exams tend to be very long and tend to be good at testing your understanding rather than rote learning the solutions to the tutorial exercises or something like that. I imagine our cohort will be smaller again next year. In general I think there’s about 40-50 who do honours each year.

In the first two years there’s not that many actuarial subjects so I wouldn’t describe the cohort as being that close, although it varies from person to person – we were lucky enough to have FM2 recorded and I learnt IAS and FM1 from the textbook so I’m not that close with the majority of students. Most of my friends at university aren’t in actuarial. Some students however will attend every lecture and are quite close so I suppose it varies from person to person. I’ve heard the cohort tends to get a bit closer in 3rd/4th year as the cohort is smaller.
To be fair, it’s hard to say “second year actuarial student” because at the end of second year all you’ve really touched on is some financial maths and gotten a decent grounding in maths and some general commerce units (economics/finance/accounting/etc). You won’t really have any idea about how super funds or insurance work other than maybe the slightest of an introduction from IAS, if you can remember that. Having spoken with older students and recent grads, actuarial really kicks up in 3rd year and then again in honours year. In your first two years a lot of your commerce units – the finance etc – are very easy compared to what’s coming later on.

One of the big drawbacks of the ‘life’ of an actuarial student, at Melbourne at least, is the lack of recordings in 3rd and 4th year. Yes, 9/10am classes suck (if you’re like me and live ages away), and are even worse when you have nothing between it and a 4pm class in the afternoon.


If anyone has any more questions on actuarial I am more than happy to answer

[Amity]

Just wanted to add something (I was tossing up between this course when I was in yr12 and have followed it relatively closely since), I have heard from a course within the graduating cohort that only 5 people got offered actuarial jobs (this was early in the year) for 2015. Maybe more had been offered jobs since, but if so I don't think it was many.

Food for thought for anyone keen on this I guess.

I don't think it's probably quite as bad as this would make it out to be. That number of 5 could possibly come from Deloitte/PwC/EY who tend to hire quite early on in the year, but there are more firms that open up later. A lot of firms recruit through internships, and there are far more than five of those. Although to be fair, quite a few internships went to second year students this year It is definitely competitive though, and I recommend doing internships at the end of second and third year if you can. It would help to have a bit of extracurricular stuff to get yourself to an interview.

Speaking with students in 3rd/4th year and grads those that do honours and get most or all of their exemptions and have good communication skills will generally get a job. Admittedly, not everyone gets a job that is strictly actuarial work, some go into data analytics/risk/etc.