Here at exaMENTOR we know that preparing to write any exam for the second, third, fourth time is not easy. That is why for the next several days we will be featuring a blog from an experienced writer, Vasily Ryabov, who was a repeat writer at the SOA, but after having successfully passed it in 2012, went on to pass the UFE in 2012 on his first attempt! In addition to his great accounting skills, he also has a great writing style so we promise you it will be an entertaining read with some very helpful insights.

Part 1

It is always easier to do something for the first time. Whatever happens, happens; you are stepping into the unknown.

Attempting the same exam for the second time is much harder. You carry the weight of failure from a year before and more pressure to pass this time or you’ll have a lot of explaining to do when you face your friends and family. On the other hand, you are now a more experienced writer and the exam hall is a more familiar environment. You are better prepared psychologically, because you have been there, even if you failed previously.

Some of your friends will fail too. Statistically this is true. Everyone will tell you “if you don’t pass this time, it’s all good.” So you approach your first attempt knowing that you might fail and it is okay, because people do fail, at least about 20% of the candidates every year.

I had this mindset on my first try. I wrote an exam without much fear of failure, so when the results came out and I landed in the 10^th decile, I was not surprised at all. I must have gone in the 20% who fail. Just statistics. Nothing else. Next year the numbers will surely be in my favour.

I didn’t change much for my next try––and the results were the same.

This time, I began analyzing everything that led to my repeated failure and decided to change as much as possible where my studying and exam writing were concerned. After all, how much worse can it get?

The first step I took was hiring a professional marker, an independent and experienced person to help me pass this time. After a short Google search I found exaMENTOR and immediately emailed them asking to register for the SOA preparation, ignoring the fact that the next SOA sitting was 10 months away. They responded quickly, assigning me a mentor, and furthermore, their prices were reasonable, so I felt that I had completed the first strategic change. Now I was not alone.

I then waited until January 2012 to meet with my mentor. During our meeting, we discussed how to structure my studying differently from what it had been during the past two years. First, and the most important change, was no study buddies. Studying with someone else may work for you, but it certainly did not work for me. Your friends live on a different schedule, they usually do not have a lot of marking experience and they bear no responsibility for your performance. You would want to study with them only because studying properly is a very lonely, tiring and boring experience, so it feels a little easier to have someone there to suffer with you.

That is a very big trap to fall into. Studying for the SOA, UFE or any other exam cannot ever be a fun experience. It involves sacrifice, has to be fruitful and must deliver results. It serves to advance your career, not to be an entertainment option, so expecting fun out of studying is counterproductive.

Many candidates, especially first-time writers, might object, saying that they need someone else to mark their cases. Here it is worth noting that your peers are not the best markers and the ability to write cases well does not equal great marking skills. Similar to sports, a great athlete does not always make a great coach. So the solution is simple––find a great coach. Yes, they charge a fee, but it is more cost-effective to pay a bit more for a great marker than to have to take an exam repeatedly.

The moral support will be there regardless, provided by friends and family and also by some of your peers, who may actually be studying for the same exam. Do not fall into the temptation of trading services by marking their cases in exchange for them marking yours, because all of you should dedicate more time to studying and working on your own weaknesses instead of marking someone else’s cases. It is unreasonable to expect valuable feedback with a lot of insight. You are more likely to receive a quick mark with one closing comment at the end from them, “Work on your time management” or “Should use more concise sentences.”

When in doubt about how to rate your performance on a specific indicator, inexperienced markers (i.e. fellow candidates) will give you an “RC.” Giving a “NC” or “C” is a much higher responsibility for a marker, because the writer must have either deserved a “C” and done a really good job or failed rather obviously and received their “NC” or even “NA.” So “RC” is the “grey area” mark, because it is easy to achieve when training for an exam (and while being marked by your friends), but is much harder to obtain in the real exam scenario.

So I got rid of all these distractions and studied by myself. I sent my cases for marking to professional markers and progressed slowly; I got a lot of “NC’s” and only some “RC’s” and “C’s.” I have to admit that studying like that was not easy­––on top of being alone, I would generally achieve much lower ratings than a year before, when I was being marked by my friends. Indeed, the truth is sometimes difficult to face. However, “I am not telling you it is going to be easy; I am telling you it is going to be worth it.”….

…to be continued