Singapore Kopitiam

Thanks anyway, the admission office said that the diplomas in singapore polytechnic are not accepted.

Hello everyone! Since this is the nearest I can find, I decided to drop a post here! I'm a Malaysian, yes your neighbour country haha! Currently doing A-Levels now at Taylor's College Subang Jaya, Malaysia and would be flying to UK next year September to pursue Actuarial Science! Hope that someone will reply me.. lol~ at least to greet me or something. :O

Heh, where are you doing Actuarial Science at...LSE?

trying to budget for my freshman year. could anyone kindly give a ballpark figure, per month, on living costs excluding airfare, accomodation and tuition fees, OUTSIDE London. Assuming I don't go club/drink/havoc/whatever often, occasionally eat out, don't have to take a bus to school and cook most of the time, since I'm non-catered.

Much Appreciated!

LOL! Nope, but that's one of my choices that I'm gonna apply this year via UCAS.

Ahh - thought you already had an offer. Would MORSE be one of your choices?

You can choose Warwick. MMORSE has lots of flexibility, focuses on math modules in first two years so you'd be able to work and understand actuarial models better..and also a fall back option if you decide you're not interested in Actuarial Science - there are still three other streams.

There's also a strong Malaysians Student Association as well...

Umm..I'm doing MMORSE at Warwick - but on the Statistics and Mathematics stream. Kind of found out in my second year I wasn't interested in being an actuary, and was happy I rejected LSE's Actuarial Science for MMORSE.

Warwick has the best Dikir Barat though!

Well, I learnt a lot of hard math in my first and second year - includes analysis, algebra, metric spaces, measure theory, as well as statistics usually covered in year 3/4 of other uni courses, such as likelihood principle, MGFs, Fisher's Information, Cramer Rao, Markov chains, etc.

I guess game theory in Economics as well as decision analysis...

You'd be surprised - many Year 1s (Chinese included) participate in the annual dikir for MNight. In fact, I was also asked to do Dikir this year..considering I'm a Year 3...(Which I declined, but perhaps I should have done it..)

Do you have any friends doing Actuarial Science at LSE or Cass? What are their feedbacks regarding their university life and quality of lectures? Would the course structure of MMORSE be slightly much rigorous than that of Actuarial Science degree at LSE/Cass?

Since MMORSE is the flagship degree of Warwick and since Warwick is one of the top universities for Maths in the UK, I assume that MMORSE must be a very intensive course, even much intensive that a normal Actuarial Science degree at LSE/Cass. I could be wrong though haha!

Oh Dikir Barat! But what language do they use for performance? Malay right? :O Gasp. My Malay language proficiency has been rotting since the day I finished my SPM, which was more than a year ago.

Unfortunately, no - I don't really know anyone doing Actuarial Science at these Universities.

However, a brief glance at the modules shows that MORSE is way more rigorous than Actuarial Science. It's like - you learn the maths behind the models in your first two years in MMORSE, and then learn the real actuarial material in the last two years. Whereas when you do Actuarial Science, you learn the actuarial material first, followed by the mathematics (if any) behind it.

Reason why it's like this at Warwick is because MMORSE is 4 years (for actuarial), and there are four streams, so the common factor behind these streams is the mathematics - you get to learn how to apply it in your last two years to your chosen field.

MMORSE is quite intensive - you do learn math in the first year that other universities may cover in their second year, and as well as measure theory (usually a graduate module or a finalist module) in your second year. But the good part is that you'll be equipped (given that you actually work hard at these modules) with the tools to not only understand, use, work, modify actuarial models, but to break them and create new actuarial models where needed. And perhaps more.

As for Dikir, there is some Malay, but some of the songs are in English as well, and I think they modify from pop culture too. Remember - audience for MNight also includes VIPs from Warwick, as well as other English speaking people. If I'm not mistaken, MNight won the Best Society Event Award this year :P

Somewhat yes - but I think the key part is understanding why the mathematics behind it work, rather than given: "This works, believe in it." It's also quite useful when you graduate and when you see a model, and question the assumptions behind it - there are stories told where models break down and economists / statisticians / actuaries make humongous mistakes because they made a false assumption which they ought to know doesn't hold if they actually took the math modules behind it...

On the flip side, you do take an extra year to complete MMORSE, as opposed to doing a three year Actuarial Science degree.

I do agree that it's better to learn the Math first, so at least you know what you are doing, and can actually apply the Math to something else (maybe if you don't want to be an actuary, or after an actuarial career)...

They don't learn about Contingencies, unfortunately.

True, it is Malay culture, but nothing wrong about that