Maths career advice please.

Insurance is the actuaries' primary field of work, but I'm looking forward to other uprising fields such as Finance and Investment, and probably Risk Management too. I believe that insurance field is quite developed in the sense that not much development could be done, or probably progressed at a very slow rate. Whereas for Finance and Investment, there are still a lot of rooms for research and development. I can be in any position in the financial market too, and being an actuary doesn't mean that you need to work only in the insurance field.

Anyone of you knows anything about MMORSE at Warwick? I'm considering it now, besides Actuarial Science at Cass. I do know that MMORSE provides flexibility and in case I don't want to pursue the actuarial stream, I can choose other streams such as Maths and Stats, Operational Research and Stats, Econometric and Mathematical Economics.

The difference between both MMORSE and Actuarial Science is that, in MMORSE you will be taught very intensive Maths in your first two years to prepare you for all these 4 streams, after which you will be taught actuarial materials in your third and forth year; whereas for Actuarial Science, you will learn actuarial materials straight then only Maths behind it. I somewhat prefer campus life rather than city life too.

What do you think about Warwick campus? One of my seniors said, Warwick campus is ugly, and if I want a campus life, make sure I got into Oxbridge cause they have the most beautiful buildings around, otherwise go to London cause the whole London will be your campus.

Insurance is still the main area as you said, though GI has really started to move up in the field in terms of developments and prospects for actuaries who are new to the profession! Despite the fact that you can get specifically finance and investment based actuaries, it doesn't mean they will be dealing with the stock market, an investment actuary specialises in fund management and developing investment strategies to match insurance liabilities (so as you can see there is still some line of insurance based in it, but not much). But like you mentioned, there is a vast array of actuaries such as Investment, Risk, Healthcare, Pensions, ERM, GI, Life insurance etc . good career if you like it, and you have desire to pass exams

If you prefer campus to city life, chose Warwick! Warwick is easily one of the top 6 in the UK, and due to its prestige in this case, its job prospects are very very good (opposed to City: but City has still a very good career service). Despite it not being in a city, some ppl may find that annoying, but its close to Coventry, and if that doesnt suit your liking birmingham! Besides London to there is around 1 hour on the tube, so strictly speaking, its overall not so bad!

The course I think is better because it gives you times if you want to specialise, IN CASE you change your mind, as it could possibly happen! MMORSE degree is very highly respected amongst employers, and offers a much wider variety of options and flexibility especially in the final year

(source: One of my best friend does the course there, and he loves it )

They all want to be actuaries (otherwise they'd be doing economics or maths and econ or something).

You found S1 intersting? Even my enthusiastic friend didn't find S1 interesting. Presumibly it does eventurally get harder at university.

You have an offer. I'm quite suprised you didn't check what modules you'll be studying. It's one stats in year 1, then nothing but stats in 2 and 3. The module in year 1 is disgusting. It's not even interesting because you just learn techniques without a clue as to why or how they work. You do what a robot does only slower.

You're also forced to do LSE100 although if you skip all your classes and go to no lectures all you get is an automated email telling you to go of they'll be terrible consequences. Which obviously isn't too bad as they only come once every two weeks and you can delete them in about five seconds, which is still quite annoying I admit, but it's better than doing it.

LOL! Is that actually true? You don't have to attend any of the LSE 100 courses? Because to be honest with you, I don't really like talking in front of a lot of people I don't know.

Correct.

(I could show you a picture of the F I got if you wanted, but rest assured it was actually a 0).

Correct.

(I could show you a picture of the F I got if you wanted, but rest assured it was actually a 0).

LOL, the professor wrote ' he didn't due the course' not to mention the other errors the e-mail. Wow, at least he said you could get away with that kind of attitude you must have done pretty amazing to justify having 8 absences. Maybe mine will be like 8 absences with reasons... So are you still thinking of doing maths? If i didn't do Economics i definitely would do maths! It's so interesting haha.

Wow your tutor goes to town with LSEforYou. Mine's just like "Came to see me, seems to be doing ok" - that's been his comment for 2 years (i.e. 6 terms).

Yeah, I don't really see the big deal at the end of the day. It's not like I'm a precocious genius that doesn't have do any work by the way. I work extremely hard. I just don't do it in classes or lectures. And really, if all students were like me, professors would never have to give lectures, just put the slides up on Moodle and let us get on with it. I think that's fair enough. Why would they care?

I didn't do anything for LSE100. I just didn't see the point. I don't think many people see the point of doing it, but they do it anyway because it goes on your transcript. But really, if it's a pointless module, who would care? It's like general studies. I don't know how pointless a compulsory module would have to be before everyone at LSE decided not to do it. It's also especially pointless for me if I end up pursuing maths anyway. Which I do intend to do as y academic advisor actually gave me some really helpful advice about that. Apparently he comes from a similar background to me, and MSc courses don't so much care about what specific maths you've done, but rather that you can show you're good at it. So I'll give it a go, and if it doesn't go well, I could do worse with a degree from LSE I guess.







Yeah mine was like that before I swapped from Actuarial Science to Maths With. I had Xao Xing and he wrote like, "this student..." and it was like a sentence. To be fair I think that’s what almost all academic advisors actually do. It is pretty pointless having those comments because they’re all busy people and nobody ever reads them.

Despite what my academic actually wrote there I do think he actually likes me a bit, lol. It's not like I'm malicious or anything. I'm at least honest and don't bull**** him with obvious lies, which I do think he appreciates. We've had some good chats in his meetings. Last time we ended up talking about his daughter and the Olympics somehow.

I don't agree with the LSE line that you shouldn't rely on past papers, but that's my opinion. If you look through some past MA100 papers, you can not only predict what's going to come up, but also the order in which it's going to come up. I found MA100 to be extremely repetitive in terms of its questions - same thing over and over again but with different numbers/phrasing.

Private Message me your e-mail and I'll send you the solutions.

I don't really agree with you that EC102 has a lack of resources. Yes, the lectures aren't recorded, but that's the case at most universities and even most courses at LSE (especially 3rd year). I agree it'd be helpful if he put up his slides because the lectures sometimes move too fast to copy everything down, but not being able to understand slides is usually to do more with not making notes about the stuff he says out loud. You get the course pack, you get the books which are very good and thorough, you get solutions to weekly problems which cover most topics, you get problem set solutions which cover even more topics, you get 18 hours of revision lectures (it's only 2 hours in other courses, even in 2nd year) and you have office hours. When you answer an EC102 question, don't just look for the fastest way to conclude that x = 5 or you have more income or whatever, try to understand why you're asked that question, i.e. what is Prof. Young trying to test your knowledge of and do you really understand why that answers works or have you just managed to figure out the right answer through some maths/common sense?

ST102 - 70/120 doesn't translate to 70/100 unfortunately. It's true that 100+/120 translates to 100/100, but marks below get scaled in some way that they refuse to reveal (i.e. you could get 85/120 but end up with, say, 78/100 when you get your results). There should be some explanation of this in the summer.

Section A is about applying knowledge, yeah. I think vector spaces + group theory are quite easy marks in the sense that there isn't that much they can ask you which you won't have come across before. The analysis part is hard (and compulsory in the exam), so you just have to hope for a nice question there (2010 year lucked out big time).

Back on topic btw: I really don't see the point in studying Actuarial Science in general. I mean, you can do most economics/maths related courses and get a job as an actuary. The only thing the course offers you really is exemptions from actuarial exams, but is that such a big deal? I'd rather take a degree that's less pigeonholed than Actuarial Science because then you can avoid questions like "why do you want to be a trader if you're studying Actuarial Science?" if you decide not to eventually become an actuary. And really, I don't see how any 17/18 year olds know for certain that they want to be actuaries...