<p>I wanted to be an actuary in high school too; I had some teachers discourage me from doing it because they said I was too good a writer, and needed to go into a writing field. They were good teachers but I resented that advice, especially since they were history & English teachers who knew nothing about my mathematical skills (and I was an excellent student in math!)</p>
<p>But no, you don’t have to go to a school and major in actuarial science. A major in mathematics, statistics or applied mathematics with some business courses will do you just as well, and you can later go and get an MS in actuarial science or statistics. I don’t think that the advantage of an actuarial science degree is more significant than going to a top school; top schools have more access to internships with big firms, and the coursework is going to all be very similar anyway. My Ivy doesn’t have an actuarial science major, but it does have an applied mathematics major and a statistics major as well as an MS in actuarial science and mathematics in finance. A motivated undergraduate could take a few graduate-level classes in one of those programs.</p>
<p>I would also think that many competitive schools that don’t have dedicated undergraduate actuarial programs, but either master’s programs in actuarial science OR knowledgeable advisors, would be able to offer information about passing the exams. It’s something to investigate in each of the schools you apply to, whether they have an undergrad AS major or not.</p>
<p>There are some pretty good schools on that list, though - Penn State, Temple, Michigan, Wisconsin-Madison and University of Toronto are all CAE schools, and CUNY-Baruch, Columbia, DePaul, George Mason, McGill, Purdue, SUNY-Albany, Alabama, UConn, UIUC, Minnesota, UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Charlotte, UT-Austin, and Penn are all listed as covering all of the things tested on the first two exams and at least parts of the third and fourth.</p>