Exam 6-US Intro

How Exam 6 is Different

Many of you have already taken Exam 5 so you're familiar with an upper level exam, but Exam 6 is different:

• As with Exam 5, it's an essay-style exam (versus multiple choice)
• Unlike Exam 5, the emphasis is on memorization vs calculation
• People generally find that Exam 6 takes about 15% more study time than Exam 5
• You have to have a well-rehearsed, time management strategy for the day of the exam. (See On BattleDay for more on this.)

The BattleActs Philosophy

Our recommended approach to studying for Exam 6 differs from what you might expect. Here are a few things you should keep in mind:

• There's no way you can memorize the vast amount of material (roughly 2,500 pages)
• We analyzed prior exams and have identified many topics and specific questions that are repeated from year to year. This material is your fundamental base. We’ve highlighted all of this for you, and you need to know it REALLY, REALLY well.
• Once you feel confident with this fundamental base, you can move on to less frequently tested material (time permitting.)

This is all just common sense.

Getting the Most out of BattleActs

You may want to jump right in and start studying. Tip: Don’t do this. Take a little extra time up front to get organized and you will save yourself a lot of time.

1. Understand our ranking table. This table ranks readings based (primarily) on points-per-reading across recent exams. You should study the readings in rank order, and allocate time and effort accordingly. BattleActs helps you avoid spending too much time on lower ranked papers and not enough on the more important material.
   • The top 24 readings on the syllabus (out of 60+) account for about 80% of the points on the exam.

      → Spend 80% of your time on these top 24 readings. (Learn them thoroughly).

      → Spend 20% of your time on the rest.

2. Look at a calendar.See how much time you have until exam day. Based on the study tip above, draw up a study schedule. Leave the last few weeks for review and practice exams. See below for a suggested study schedule. If you can, leave roughly the last 20 days exclusively for review and practice.

   readings #1-6: 35 days for a 4-month study schedule (45 days for a 5-month schedule)

   readings #7-12: 25 days for a 4-month study schedule (30 days for a 5-month schedule)

   readings #13-18: 10 days for a 4-month study schedule (15 days for a 5-month schedule)

   readings #19-24: 10 days for a 4-month study schedule (15 days for a 5-month schedule)

   readings #25-60+: 20 days for a 4-month study schedule (25 days for a 5-month schedule)

   → review and practice exams: 20 days

3. Start studying. Most people will want to start with the #1 ranked topic, Statement of Actuarial Opinion (SAO), which is covered in Odomirok.16-17-SAO, COPLFR.SAO, and to a much smaller extent in ASOP.36. That's a great idea and here's what we recommend:

   Read the wiki article first

   • Many of the source readings are long, boring, and hard to understand. Our wiki articles are short and sweet. They are also are written in plain English, and will help you grasp the main ideas much more quickly.

   Scan the source reading. (The Porter book is an exception. You don't need to purchase it.)

   • The time you spend on the source reading will be more efficient if you already have a basic understanding.

   Go back to the wiki article:

   • Do the quizzes, begin memorizing, and work the practice templates for the calculation problems. (These tasks constitute the longest step in the study process. You will be switching between the wiki article, the source reading, and the examiner's reports as your brain absorbs the information.)

4. Battle Table. This feature tells you explicitly what is most important based on past exams. Remember – you can’t memorize everything, but you must know the answers to these frequently tested exam questions, and you must know them really well. Practice writing out clear, concise answers so that on exam day, the answers will come to you quickly and automatically. You won’t have the time on exam day to figure out appropriate answers.
5. Quizzes: These are flash cards, but we call them Battle Cards (just to maintain the fun Battle theme!) And this is how you memorize. Read the question, memorize the answer, and for best memory retention, write out the answer. Don't do the quizzes in the same way and in the same order every time. Use the "Shuffle" function. As you work through the quizzes, note your BRQ (Battle-Readiness Quotient) in the navigation bar next to your name. This provides you with an objective measure of how well you know the material. It starts at 0% and rises as you work through the quizzes. Keep track of your weak areas. You can also see your quiz scores for indiviudal wiki articles in your Quiz Score Summary. This link is in the sidebar of the wiki and also in the navigation bar in the main part of the site. NOTE: If the quiz questions are not showing up, click on the BattleActs Main Page link (see links on the left), or log out, then log back in again and they will appear.
6. Leaderboard: This page is in the main part of the BattleActs website (not a wiki page) and is part of how BattleActs keeps you motivated. It's a ranked listing of everyone's BRQ so you can see how you're progressing versus everyone else. Crush your friends! (You can appear anonymously if you wish.)

The BattleActs Scoring System

On your first day of study, you'll mainly be learning new material. But each day after that, part of your study should be devoted to review. And the portion devoted to review will gradually increase as you work your way through the material. Ideally, the final couple of weeks will almost entirely be for review and for working the most recent exam. If you haven't already, take a quick look at About the BattleCards.

Question: how does the BattleActs scoring system help direct your study

The table in Combat Training provides two critical pieces of information for each paper:

• score out of 10
  • (Note that your score tends to drop for each day you don't attempt a BattleCard. This is to simulate the fading of memory over time)
• average # of days since you last attempted each BattleCard

Here is how you can use the scores & days-lapse information

• After covering a new paper, get your score up to at roughly 7/10 before moving to the next paper (This applies to the top 24 readings. For lower-reanked readings you can do 2 or 3 at once since they are shorter and you have to get through them more quickly)
• You can't review every paper every day because there is just too much material. You should decide what to review based on your quiz scores and the average days lapse. (If you've successfully reviewed a paper several times already, the scoring algorithm recognizes this and your score will not fade as quickly. In this case, the average days lapse can be higher. You will have to judge for yourself how comfortable you are not looking at a paper for a certain number of days.)
• By BattleDay (exam day) you should aim for a score of 8 out of 10 for all of the high-ranked papers in the Combat Training table, and at least 6 for the lower-ranked papers.

Helpful Links

• When you're doing the quizzes, your retention is improved by writing out the answers. For details on this, see Common Reasons for not Passing.

• Note that some BattleCards are actually old exam questions. Anywhere you see E, you can click to see the indicated exam question and examiner's report answer, just for that question.

• There is more information on how the BattleCards work that you should read at least once. It's short.

• Combat Score vs BRQ: You may notice your Combat Score listed on the Main Page is slightly higher than your BRQ.

   → Your Combat score is your score from the quizzes in the wiki articles. Your individual quiz scores are available on the Combat Training page.

   → Your BRQ scores includes low-probability questions and some older exam problems. You can access these non-quiz problems with the Battlecard filtering function.

Last 3 Weeks Before Exam

Use this time to review and do at least one practice exam, ideally two. We keep the most recent exam as a hold-out sample from the BattleCard database, so you can use this exam for fresh practice .

• Use your overall BRQ score to gain confidence but also use your quiz subscores to identify your weak areas. You can also use the Battlecard filtering function page for this and to filter and display questions you need to practice more. The color-coding of BattleCatds is a popular feature!

• If you do a BattleCard on one day then come back to it the next day, you'll see that you score (and overall BRQ) has gone down a little bit. This is intentional: It simulates the fading of memory over time. But the system keeps track of what you've done and the more times you do a BattleCard, the more slowly your BRQ will go down, and the faster it will go back up. The theory is that once you've learned something well, you don't have to review it as often. And it's all built into the BRQ scoring algorithm

• When doing a practice exam, you will want to duplicate the exam situation as closely as possible. Go somewhere where you will have 4 hours of uninterrupted time. Time management for this exam is KEY. Even if you know the material 100%, but don’t manage your time on exam day, you will put yourself at a huge disadvantage. Make sure you analyze your mistakes and find your knowledge gaps.
• Read the On BattleDay article. These are simple tips, yet will save you a lot of precious time on exam day.

Almost there...

If you are a returning user, take a short detour to check changes to syllabus.

Now you are ready! Go to the Ranking Table and start reading / studying / calculating!

Disclaimer

The BattleActs study system is designed to help you focus on what we believe to be the most important and most frequently tested topics on the exam. Questions may come up from material not covered in our study system. We suggest that you use your own judgement where to use your time when reading the source material.