The Usual

Right now, I'm driving into finals week. Stats final in three days, intro prob final in five days, and foundations of actuarial science in eight days.

How do I think I'll do? Well, I've got "A"s in all of the classes, and it would probably require me to seriously tank my finals to damage that. But, like any grind, insecurity is a hallmark of our personalities, despite the low probability of us making an "F" on a final.

So, we study. I've studied three hours yesterday, and will study three hours today.

And...I already took an exam on Saturday. I took the skills test for my Basic Cardiac Life Support test (I took the written part online). So I have my CPR card, and with my nursing license, I'm eligible for any full or part time nursing job in my state.

But no takers. A St. Anthony candle is lit right now, and it's burning in the kitchen.

As for actuarial science, Notre Dame is seeking to establish an actuarial science major. (Cribbed from the fine folx at Actuary.net.)

Tomorrow: final day of class. I'll let you know what's going on.

Letter to a friend who skipped class....

-- M wrote:

> Hi J,
>
> How are you doing? I was so tired I didn't feel
> like going to class
> today :), What did I miss in N and S's
> class?
>
> M

M,

Pretty much nothing. In Dr. N's class, he went over the answers from Quiz #14 (median score = 5). He gave us another set of problems to take home (Set #2) and we had Review Quiz #4 (not graded.)

In Dr. S's class, he did a problem like this:

"Assume X is Uniform(0,1). Let Y-sub-t be Bernoulli(x), i.e.,

Pr(Y-sub-t = 1 | x) = x
Pr(Y-sub-t = 0 | x) = 1-x

Compute the density functions f(X|Y-sub-1 = 1)
and f(X|Y-sub-1 = 0)

He then confused the daylights out of us. We had five minutes to work on it on our own, and after no one could do it, Dr. S worked out two ways to do it. The first way worked; the second way didn't. He didn't have his notes...I suspect he planned to put it on the computer, but he couldn't get the classroom computer to work.

That mess is supposed to develop the Beta function. How, no one could say.

BTW, who should I be voting for in the AS Club elections? I don't know 1/2 of these people.

--J

Two More Days

Yesterday, not much going on. We continue to review material in Dr. N's class. And once again, not reading carefully trips me up on a quiz. Instead of finding Pr(X-Y=3) for a problem, I find Pr(X+Y=3). It was a simple problem; I don't know how much the error will cost me. It seems that the longer I'm in that class, the stupider I get.

As for Dr. S, we finally got our scores back from Exam II. The Exam was a total of 100 points; and as it turned out, 45 points was good enough for an "A". (0-17 was good enough for a "D".) He wrote the range of "A" scores as:

A -- 45 to 67 plus outlier

I got a 78, which made me the outlier score. Someone, of course, had to ask, "who's the outlier?" and a wiseacre student said, "I know who it is!", indicating me, which left me embarrassed -- I don't like to be singled out like that.

Dr. S then said, "Well, J has an unfair advantage. And he's taking the hard path." Which, translated, means (I guess), "J already has a degree in math and grad school experience, and he's going for the Ph. D." So I'm hoping that this hard path doesn't end up crashing me.

In Dr. Z's class we finished the last of the new material. Here are my final exams:

May 3rd: Dr Z, Intro Stat
May 5th: Dr N, Intro Prob
May 8th: Dr S, Foundations of Actuarial Science
May 12th: A trip with my wife to Lake Charles, LA, where I will attempt (futilely) to prove that for the variable X: casino winnings, E(X)<0 over the long run.
May 18th: Exam P test

Went to the AS meeting. I showed up at 2:45 p, but they wouldn't seat anyone until 3:30 p, which I found ridiculous as they were only serving the usual crunchy stuff served at college meetings -- you'd have thought it was catered by a Cordon Bleu chef, the way they went on.

So I sat around for 30 minutes -- I couldn't stay forever, as I had to be back home in time for din-din. I chatted with a guy named B (who has been in my classes forever but I've never really chatted with him). It wasn't a total lost. I just have to get better at networking. (As it turned out, one of the professors was sitting alone. I guess he hasn't gotten better at it, either.)

Time to Kill

Right now, I'm waiting for the meeting of the Actuarial Science club. Showed up at 2:45 p, meeting isn't until 3:30 p. Seeing as how the officers are going to be appointed, and noting the ridiculous lack of direction of the club over 2006, this oughta be good for a laugh. I don't put much confidence in the current leadership, to put it that way.

I'll point readers to two interesting posts on Actuary.net . First, the fact that Carnegie Mellon has just formed an actuarial science club. Dammit, we're falling behind in the arms race of actuarial science clubs! I'll bet they're already more organized than our AS club.

Second, this post. An actuarial internship might have been available as of April 25th, but it might not be made available much longer! Funny, during my interval there was an emphasis on the proprietary nature of information at companies hiring actuaries, and now, someone's private e-mail is floating across the intenet. (Let's hope that the person who sent that mail doesn't decide to Google her name.)

On the other hand, she might be impressed with the person's enthusiasm. :)

More later.

Chapters 9 and 10

Not too much to report on the actuarial front. Right now, we're in the final week of classes. Classes end next Monday and my exams are May 3rd, 5th, and 8th respectively, with Exam P scheduled for May 18th.

As it turns out, I'll have another exam scheduled -- the Basic Cardiac Life Support Exam -- cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Yes, I need to get my CPR card so I can go back into part-time nursing. Do I want to do nursing over the summer? Hell no. But I saw a film about what a UPS package loader has to do, and that scared me off.

My mother (who's a nurses' aide) says that it's a lot easier on her to work one day a week than it is to work full time. (Mom has retired.) So maybe it will be easier for me, but I don't look forward to it. I'll take an on-line exam tomorrow and a skills check possibly Saturday. After that, all I'll need is some white scrubs and I'll be ready to go.

Today's class sessions:

Dr. N: he returned the last quiz, and I tanked it. 9 out of 15 points, atypical for me. Oh well, he drops a couple of quizzes a year. The last quiz of the semester is tomorrow.

Dr. S: a long discussion about filtering. I only have the most tenuous of grasps on the material, but I know I'm going to need it if I want to study catastrophe bonds. My friend M suggests that Dr. S looks at our blank faces, knows there's no hope of illuminating us, and then he goes on with the lecture.

Dr. Z: Paired sample tests. Large samples, and small samples. And we can use a "cheat sheet" with formulas for the non-cumulative final. Now what am I going to do with all those notecards?

By the way, the title "Chapters 9 and 10" refer to the fact that I've finally reached Chapter 9 (of 10 total) of the ACTEX study manual for Exam P. Joint transformations and order statistics. This should be fun.

On Wednesday: the Actuarial Science club holds its elections for officers -- and they won't be elected! See who gets assigned as the Actuarial Science President! (It won't be me, by the way...I didn't know how much time I could contribute....)

Cultural Loneliness or "Affirmative Action"

On the school's web site I found a list of Ph. D. students in Risk Management. Of course, you could expect that I would interested in the names of my future colleagues, how many there were, etc.

There were about 12-18 names there. About 12-14 were clearly Chinese names. I suspect two were Korean names and two were either Indian or European names.
Which leads me to think that I might be the only Ph. D. student in Risk Management at my university who was born in the United States.

Being the only person who is from a given culture in a large group doesn't bother me that much -- I've done it before. I was an exchange student at a German university for one year. I hung around with, you guessed it, other exchange students. The dorm I stayed at was all exchange students, from Poland, Egypt, Spain, and elsewhere. We had to speak German because it was the only language all of us had in common.
Although, if the majority of my colleagues are going to be Chinese, I certainly wish I could speak some Chinese...I want to be as friendly as possible, and I know of at least one student who is coming from Beijing.

I'm definitely sure it must be lonely to be a non-native. I was lonely in Germany.

I told my wife about this, and she said, "you must have been the affirmative action hire". I rolled my eyes, and, given my incredible amount of self-doubt, prayed that that was not true.

Pizza and UPS

The last few days I can't say I've been more busy than lazy, but I've managed to study every day. Perhaps not as many hours as I'd like to, but I've never gone a day without study.

We are now down to the last four days of classes over 6 weekdays. Dr. N's quizzes are becoming tougher and tougher with a quiz today that, frankly, I thought I was going to fail. I solved the last problem literally as he said "time is up" and it was just like Indiana Jones sliding underneath a falling door. As it turned out, the only mistake I made was that (4-partition-2,1,1) <> C(4, 2). Which means my answer was off by a factor of 2.

In Dr. S's class, we reviewed the test. We finally found out how to come up with two random variables whose correlation is 0, but are not independent. As the class was leaving, one guy talked to me in class. He said, "I don't know what I've got in this class -- I've tried to find out and he won't tell us!!" My belief is that he wants to make the grading as subjective as he can -- Dr. S will look at the quality of the work, and decide who gets an A, B, C, etc. The bad part about this system is that students who might be on the edge of getting a D (or might be getting a D) are given no warning that they need to bring their scores up.

There was a meeting for doctoral students today, but since it was about graduation for Ph. D. students, I didn't have to attend -- although I missed out on free pizza. Usually, I'll drive for miles if the words "free pizza" are mentioned. But I needed to get home to interview for a summer job with UPS. I suspect my wife would rather have me do an office job, since they pay is better and the labor is lighter. (And both my wife and my mom want me to do PRN Nursing once a week. My thoughts on that are "fat chance" -- I'll do it only if it's a financial necessity.)

Linky! Linky!

Two more blog links added to the left.

First, the blog of the actuaries from Carlos III University of Madrid . I hope they enjoy this blog and I wish them the best of luck in their exams.

Second, the Insurance Life Blog , brought to you by the Western and Southern Financial Group. I got the link from the Carlos III blog.

Pretty Much Wiped Out

We are moving into the last part of the semester.

I have five days of classes left, spread out over the next 11 days or so.

In Intro Probability, we're just doing review. The review is really tough -- we have some old exams given by Professor T that involve some counting problems where you have to use permutations and know that P(1)P(2) is the same as P(2)P(1)...those old "how many ways can you arrange the letters in "HEIGHT" so that the two Hs are two spaces away?" kind of problems. Either I've forgotten everything I've learned since January (which might be possible, P=0.02) or I've just not been challenged enough.

Dr. S has returned from his day off -- a grad assistant gave us the test on Monday. We had eight problems. Solving five of them was considered to be a good grade. We haven't got the test back yet, so since he has five days of class, he's talking about...well, I don't know what he's talking about. Something about econometrics, the value of a claim Y at time t (Y-sub t) where Y-sub-t = Y-bar plus X_sub-(t-1) plus nu*N(t), where N(t) is standard normal. It turned into a big, normal p.d.f. mess. He said he'd write it up, and if he plans on testing us on this, he'd better. (Will I have to know this crap in grad school? Good grief!!)

I've already started studying for Dr. Z's Intro Stats class. It's going to involve a lot of memorization, knowing how to find z-sub(alpha/2), t-sub(alpha/2) with df=(n-1), one sample and two sample tests, and so on.

Other than that, no news. If something happens, I'll let you know.

Test Complete

We are now in the last two weeks of classes, and we had the Math Foundations of Actuarial Science test today.

There were ten questions. Getting five right was considered a good score. There were questions on:

1) integration of p.d.f's of f(x,y) type
2) finding means, variance, covariance, correlation
3) finding two RVs whose covariance is 0, but are not independent (I couldn't think of any)
4) finding the CDF of a function whose moment generating function is Mx(t) = e^t. (Hint: Find the mean and the variance.)
5) a Central Limit Type function.
6) the Rao-Blackwell Theorem

I think I got five right, or at least, I demonstrated "non-trivial understanding" in my answers to get partial credit enough to get to five right answers.

So this leaves two homeworks, some quizzes in Dr. N's class...and that's it for the rest of the two weeks. Then, final exam week and one of the three exams -- the one in Intro Statistics -- is NOT cumulative.

Then Exam P on May 18th. Then...naught until August.

Went to the library to pick up two books recommended by Dr. S. The first is "Linear Algebra Done Right" by Axler and the other is "Standard Optimization by Vector Space Methods" by Luenberger. I could find the first one, but not the second one -- it was listed as "checked in" but not present. I'll check later.

Also talked to Dr. G, the Ph. D. program coordinator. I asked him about taking on a job as a tutor during the semester, six hours a week from now until October. He stated that he normally doesn't recommend it but that I might be able to handle it -- I would have classes and graduate assistant work but "they don't know what you can do yet" so I probably wouldn't be given much work. Hey, if I have to take that choice versus nursing, I'd gladly eat up my first semester time.

To all of you working hard out there, keep working hard.

The Elephant

From the book Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, by Peter L. Bernstein.

"One winter night during one of the many German air raids on Moscow in World War II, a distinguished Soviet professor of statistics showed up in his local air-raid shelter. He had never appeared there before. "There are seven million people in Moscow", he used to say, "Why should I expect them to hit me?"

His friends were astonished to see him, and asked what had happened to change his mind.

"Look," he explained, "there are seven million people in Moscow, and one elephant. Last night, they got the elephant."

A Conundrum

Suppose a generous millionaire offers to play a game with you, at no charge. She will allow you to flip a coin, over and over, until you finally flip heads. (It is a fair coin.)

If you get heads on the first flip of the coin, you will get $1, and the game is over.
If you get heads on the second flip of the coin, you will get $2, and the game is over.
If you get heads on the third flip of the coin, you will get $4, and the game is over.

In general, if it takes n trials to get a head, you will receive 2^n dollars.

Now, suppose that another person taps you on the shoulder. "I would like to play in place of you, and will offer you a sum of money to change places with me."

How much should be offered before you decide to let the other person play in your place?

What does an entry level actuary do?

Now you know.

I studied for 3 hours today. I consider that "goofing off", and I did not meet my goal. Then again, I got my problem set paper back -- it turns out the person I studied with actually lives nearby.

And my "time log" project is still going strong. I'll share the results with you after a week.

How to Become an Actuary

One of the search hits on this blog was a search for "How to Become an Actuary".

Here's the answer:

a) Have a degree in math, economics, statistics or actuarial science.
b) Pass at least one of the exams offered by the SOA.

If you can do both, then "Ka-boom!!" You're an actuary!! Or at least, you can now get your foot in the door for actuary jobs.

Go to The Society of Actuaries website. See when Exam P is being given. Sign up. Buy an ACTEX manual. Study your buns off.

This conveniently-named site might help, too.

Gotta Have Your Patron

Not much to blog about. Still looking for part-time work over the summer. I got a call from Kaplan, but they want people who can commit for six months, because most of the people who need tutoring help need it for the SATs, which take place in October...and can I really afford to take 10 hours a week from studies next year for tutoring? So I'll talk to a prof and get back to them on Tuesday.

Had an interesting discussion with Dr. S. It seems that Dr. S. has become a patron. Either that, or as my wife says, research professors are so desperate for human contact that they'll talk to anyone. I asked him if I could ask questions over the summer, and he agreed. He recommended two really cool books (whcih I can get from the academic library) and hopefully, they'll prepare me for the class he's teaching next year.

I told him about my fears of not being able to get a 3.2 average and keep my assistantship. He said, "Listen! Everyone gets As in grad school. If you get a lot of "B"s, that's a sign that this isn't for you." He also said that I should not be trying to learn the whole of finance and mathematics, which is an impossible task -- I just need to get the "gist" of the course, and not sweat the math so much. Who knows, I might go into his speciality and if he's agreeable, dissertation help? Although I don't know much about his research specialty.

Did about 2 hours of tutoring -- and left one of the class problems sets with the tutoree. Forget it, I'm not going to call her back and try to get that. That's one of the problems with agreeing to meet someone for tutoring -- you have to keep an eye on your stuff.

My "To-Do" List

Today's big things:

1. Talked with Ph. D. director at school of business -- the administrative person -- made sure she knew that I had accepted the offer. She says that only two other Risk Management/AS Ph. D. students will be coming. There are about 16 or 18 Ph. D. students currently.

2. Will add two links. First, "So Long, and Thanks for the Ph. D!" -- the skills you need to survive a Ph. D. program.
Second, a talk on time management by Randy Pausch. His notes are here , even reading the notes is helpful.

3. Wrote my goals list down. I hadn't done it before, but someone reminded me to do it...now I feel better.

4. Haven't studied today. So there's a big failure of a goal right there. Still time left in the day.

5. Will get a time log and start filling it out.

Impromptu Public Speaking

Not much to tell. Dr. N has officially run out of material in Intro Probability -- the rest of the year will be spent reviewing old material. Better make sure I have my caffeine ready.

We had an impromptu five-minute quiz and Dr. N asked someone in the class to present a solution. I decided to, since if I'm going to be doing this for a living, I'd better start feeling comfortable doing it. I'm really not that uncomfortable -- I taught in a classroom setting for three years at a major university during an aborted attempt at a post-grad mathematics degree -- but the hard part is explaining things clearly.

Here's the question:

"Assume you draw 13 cards out of a standard deck, without replacement. Given that you have drawn at least two kings, what is the probability that you have drawn at least three kings?"

As for Dr. S's class, all kinds of weird stuff involving the "Rao-Blackwell Theorem", which is

E(X) = E[E(X|Y)]

Var(X) = E[Var(X|Y)] + Var(E(X|Y))

I'm writing this entirely from memory, so if the theory I wrote is wrong, it's wrong. He derived it in class but it was a very confusing explanation. We did a few problems from his problem set due Friday, so it was just watching him talk.

After class, a student asked me for some study help. I'll be meeting with her Friday. I had met with her a couple of times in the summer to help with Multivariate Calculus, but she stopped showing up. So I have some misgivings, but, it looks I'm just a soft touch. (Insert laughter here.)

Real Brief

Watching "House" right now. Things I have done and need to do:

1. Applied for summer jobs. Including, among them, package handling, tutoring, and working for Lutherans.

2. Need to make a list of goals. Am I going to post that list here? No. Not meeting one's publicly stated goals is a bit embarrassing.

3. Still need to study today. I'll probably give it an hour today, after "House" goes off.

How I Decided to Become an Actuary

It was February 2005. My wife decided that she wanted to get away from her present job in telecommunications to move to another city (with the same company). We had moved two years earlier, and I said, "I'll move if I can give up nursing."

She said, "Maybe you could go back to school." She said, "Why don't you become an actuary?"

I said, "what's an actuary?"

I looked it up online, and it sounded interesting. I took some business core classes in the summer of 2005, and took actuary science classes after that. Looooved the math. Came to love those word problems, which seemed to have such powerful real-world applications. Loved E(X), and risk. Took Exam FM in November. Passed Exam FM and was one of only three people in a class of twenty-five to pass it.

And now, I've been admitted to the Ph. D. school in risk management. I'd like to do Catastrophe Risk.

And that is how I decided to become an actuary. (Someone found my blog by asking that question, so I decided to answer. But no, I don't know what the passing score to Exam P was in February 2006.)

I Feel Good with p=0.25

Not much to report. I've spent the weekend studying -- about seven hours in total. There's a midterm in Math Foundations of Actuarial Science next Monday and I want to be ready for it. Usually, seven hours assures me an "A" in whatever exam I study in.

But this class isn't like other classes. Other classes have chapters, and an outline, and a definite progression of knowledge. This is Dr. S's class, and I have the sneaking suspicion that he talks about whatever he wants to talk about. There's a p=0.1 chance that none of the stuff he's mentioned in the last two months will show up on the midterm. I wouldn't put it past him. Oh well, at least it's a great preparation for exam p.

So I'm dealing with all kinds of transformations of random variables. Transforming f(x,y) into f(u,v), when u=h(X,Y), v=k(X,Y). Transforming f(x) into f(y) when y=h(X). And now...transforming f(x,y) into f(u) when U=h(X,Y).

Egad. It's as confusing as hell.

Other than that, no news. I'm still thinking of doing a dissertation (it's not too early to think about such things) in Catastrophe Risk -- it seems to be the big thing at my university, and it's very interesting. I almost watched another documentary on Hurricane Katrina, but I think I've seen too many of them.

Support

Came back to class on Wednesday to take an Intro Probability test, and got the
results from my Intro Stats classed. To avoid bragging, we'll say I passed and leave it at that. :)

Intro Probability is clear of tests until finals week, which is around the second week of May. I'm sure there will be another Intro Stats test in the interim, but those have not been very challenging.

There are two things I'm keeping my mind on: first, Dr S's Mathematical Foundations of Actuarial Science class Midterm II on April 17th. This is my toughest and most mathematically challenging class, and goodness knows what will be on the test. To paraphrase Bluto from Animal House: "My advice to you...is to start studying, heavily."

Second is the Ph. D. program in Fall 2006. My wife visit the website, and she said "those (first semester) classes look awful". Here's what's in store for me:

Probability Theory
Theory of Risk Sharing
Computational Risk Methods
Microeconomics -- it's a serious review of microeconomic theory with little mathematics

I might need to borrow some books for the summer: Real Analysis, Linear Algebra and Microeconomics. My wife is wanting me to work in the summer, and it doesn't look like companies are interested in me working an internship. My wife, therefore, asked that I renew my nursing license, which I did. Frankly, I'd rather eat a live snake than work as a nurse again, even in the summer.

The vice-president of the floundering Actuarial Science club met with both of my classes -- since it was the same speech, I got to leave earlier. Basically, the club faces two problems.

The first problem was mentioned in the speech...the disappearance of several AS club officers. The president got a job somewhere and just...abandoned his post. He disappeared, no contact at all. Furthermore, the club's offices were open to anyone, even beginning AS students. When these AS students decided AS was too tough, and changed majors, they dropped out, leaving a directionless skeleton crew.

The second problem was not mentioned...but I know about it. It was the fact that the faculty was not supporting the AS club. To them, it was an afterthought. The new AS chairman, a famous actuary, didn't want anything to do with it -- he spends a lot of his time traveling, it seems. None of the other faculty members wanted to take control, either. So it left the students to fend for themselves. Something tells me that the actuarial science department might find itself swallowed up by the risk management department if it doesn't set priorities, even minor ones.

Holy Crap!

For anyone whose comments I didn't answer...I apologize!!

I always wondered why this blog was not getting any comments! As it turns out, they were in the "moderate comments" subheader of Blogger, waiting for me to moderate them!

So, they're now published. My apologies again.

--James

"No."

When I last posted, I mentioned that I was traveling south for a job interview on Monday. Here is the story.

I woke up at 5:30 am to get ready for the subway trip to the local airport. After leaving home at 6:30 and arriving at the local airport -- it's always a good idea to plan your airport arrival for at least two hours before your scheduled departure -- My plane finally departed at 9:30 and arrived locally at my interview site at 11:15 am.

I was picked up by my interviewer. There were only about 9 people (in total) working for this consulting company and I met six of them for lunch. I made sure to remember not to order anything messy (you don't want anything to get on your clothes) or expensive. As it turned out, we arrived at a French/Vietnamese place. (I am reminded of the Right Minded Actuary who warns that you might face some challenges in cuisine. :)

However, oddly enough, the day before the flight I had my first visit to a Vietnamese restaurant. So the food wasn't foreign to me. I tried to be polite, but not too polite, made sure not to gobble my food, and ALWAYS thanked the waitress for whatever she did for me, even if it was just a simple refill.

After that, I went to visit the office. The interviewer warned that it wouldn't be marble floors and glass crystal windows. And indeed, it was not. It was a dump, to be frankly. However, this office did actuarial evaluations for pension plans from all across the state. I suppose the lesson should be "take no account of the surroundings".

First, I talked to the founder. He explained the work the company did in detail -- generally, he stated (and every other interviewer emphasized) that the very first work any consulting pension actuary does in in benefits calculation -- you have to know how to calculate benefits. You have to know how to do it without mistakes, as the firm can be held liable for a mistake you made. Generally, a beginner signs that (s)he did the calculation, and the result is reviewed by a senior actuary.

"But I don't know what they expect me to calculate!" you might say. No problem. You'll be brought along in increments, but you won't be given other responsibilities until you know how to do the benefit calculations, so it is both in your best interest and the company's to know how to do this.

Unfortunately...the company will not show you any benefits calculations being made during the interview. Benefits calculation is proprietary -- it's a trade secret.

After talking with the founder, I talked with the two other senior actuaries. I call this the "Come to Jesus" part of the interview, or the sermon. The actuaries emphasized not only the need for calculations to be error-free, but also the odd hours consulting actuaries work. You have to be ready (during some parts of the year) to work on Saturday, and if the work load is bad enough, even on Sunday.

The three major questions I was asked were:

"Tell me about yourself." (Remember...sell yourself, and don't give them your life story. Every part of your story you tell should sell your talent.)
"How have your past experiences prepared you for this job?" (In particular, did you have deadlines? Or major responsibilities)
"Have you ever given presentations, or directed a group?" (As a consulting actuary, you might have to present your results to a group of non-actuaries. How comfortable do you feel about speaking?)

The hours were stressed in particular. You might have to travel to give a presentation at some late hour, say, 8:30 pm, and not get back until 11pm. Furthermore, both actuaries emphasized the difficulty in studying for exams while working full time. (I got the impression that every actuary had failed at least one exam; this is almost a given in the field.)

Finally, I reviewed the day with the phone interview. We then talked benefits and numbers. (Note: NEVER ask about benefits during the phone interview -- you can find that out at the face-to-face interview.) He asked what kind of salary I considered reasonable. (Be sure you have a number. The best place to go is http://www.salary.com, where you can look up actuarial salaries by job title and geographic location. I put myself at the 40th percentile of salary for an Actuary I position, since I would be relocating. (If you really want the job, you could ask for the 25th percentile.)

And that was it. I was driven back to the airport, and they flew me back.

I will state that my interview was a bit different. First...I needed an offer right away. I've been accepted into my college's Ph. D. program in Risk Management. Obviously, the department needed to know my answer ASAP, as it was a competitive program. So if I got a good offer, I would choose the consulting actuary position; if not, I would accept the Ph. D. offer which comes with a $15,000/yr stipend.

I got the call back yesterday. Yes, they liked me, but they decided that since I was the first person they interviewed, they really weren't sure enough to give me an offer at present. To say it was a let down was an understatement. They were serious enough to fly me down and spend $600 + a lunch, but I must not have blown them away enough to forego them looking at other candidates. Oh well, as another actuarial blogger said, "it is THEIR LOSS". But I couldn't help but feel depressed over it.

So...I e-mailed my professor and accepted the Ph. D. stipend. I am now an official Ph. D. candidate in Mathematical Risk Management/Actuarial Science at my local university. I hope that my work is up to Ph. D. standards.

I just have to remind myself -- if I don't like this, I can depart after a year. After all, it's not forever, and after four years of sweat, it (theoretically) comes with a Ph. D. My only question is...should I change the title of the blog?

Checklist

Okay, getting ready to fly out tomorrow for my interview. Here's what I've done:

* got hair cut
* shined shoes
* printed off five copies of my resume
* suit, tie, cufflinks all laid out
* remembering my eating etiquette: no burgers, no pasta
* messenger bag
* "tell me about yourself" answer already written out
* info about the company to review on plane trip
* Actuarial Valuation 101 , so I can be on top of what they do
* "What's It Like To Work as a Consulting Actuary?" , so I can handle "why" questions
* prayer cloth in wallet
* pray that they don't ask about my expertise in Excel

And now...I'm ready....