Pros and Cons of Majoring in Actuarial Science

College Majors Business Majors
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<p>Worrying about outsourcing is not a good reason reason to not become an actuary; if you aren’t capable of making yourself valuable to your employer in your field, then you’ll end up on the sidelines one way or another wherever you go. </p>

<p>However, the last thing I want to do is make it sound like everyone (or even most people) should actually become actuaries. </p>

<p>Here are a few good reasons not to become an actuary:</p>

<p>It’s a small field and can have supply-demand issues. Most of the time there’s a shortage of qualified workers, but there’s almost never a shortage of entry level people. This means it can be hard to break into. This is especially true right now – if you spend any time reading the Actuarial Outpost (AO) career section, you’ll see plenty of examples. Of course, whether it’s worse than anywhere else is hard to measure.</p>

<p>You have trouble with very difficult tests. The initial actuarial exams are a bit easier than graduate level qualifying exams in quantitative subjects. The middle range actuarial exams are more difficult than qualifying exams. The final actuarial exams are (at least the SOA tests) 6 hour sit down, hand written tests that involve knowing thousands of pages of material (sometimes 5,000+) and memorizing tremendous amounts of information. They’re hard to compare to other tests.</p>

<p>Ultimately how far you go in this career depends on both a broad but typical set of job-related skills, and on passing those exams. Some actuaries manage to get by with a minimum of the former; all need the later.</p>

<p>You don’t like sitting in front of a computer, or you don’t like office life. It seems obvious, but you’d be surprised. There are people who fight tooth and nail to break into actuarial work and then find the cubicle lifestyle unbearable. A friend who was pre-med had a class with someone who quit their first actuarial job to become a vet – she called it “lifeless”. I love my job, but the sedentary lifestyle is an issue .</p>

<p>There are certainly more than these, but they are probably a good place to start.</p>