To be honest I would be very suprised if you managed to get on an actuarial programme.
I haven't read this entire thread, as am supposed to be studying for the actuarial exams starting in less than 4 weeks time! But as I am currently an actuarial trainee, I'll share a few thoughts...
There are around 30 actuarial trainees in our company.
Everyone I know has a maths degree / maths & economics degree bar 3 people
Of these 3 people, 2 have Physics degrees and the other one has a natural sciences degree. So all fairly mathsy still.
The majority of actuarial work isn't particularly difficult (from my 7 month experience - I haven't done any modelling yet which might be a bit more technical), it's just a case of being able to deal with large volumes of data and being able to accurately churn through lost of simple calcs like compound interest etc and various policy charges etc..
No doubt if you have an excellent analytical brain and a competency with numbers you would be fine.
So you wonder why actuarial practices don't employers don't employ more graduates outside of the maths type fields.
Well I think it is precisely down to the difficultly of the exams.
I have a 1st class degree from a top 10 university (not oxbridge) and even the earlier exams are fairly tricky.
From my experience, the content in the exams is very different to what you actually do on a day to day basis.
However, unfortunately passing the exams is a requirement of becoming an actuary.
I dread to think how someone would cope that hasn't got a maths or highly numerical degree.
So by all means apply, but if you are unsuccessful I think it will be because employers don't think you'll cope in the actuarial exams.
I hope this has been of some use.