What’s broken with popular FSA study strategies?
The single biggest mistake I made studying for my first FSA exam was doing multiple read-throughs of the material.
I read through the full source material, then my study manual, and then a condensed summary. Many students use this strategy, and many find success. This approach is even recommended by at least one study manual company.
However, I wasn’t just looking for a method that worked. I wanted a method that would get me the same results in half the time. Reading the material multiple times is helpful, but so is memorizing every word in the 1000+ pages of source material. The real question is “which method is the most effective use of your time?”
For my second FSA exam (5 hour exam), I set a goal to study no more than my company-allowed study time.
This constraint made it very clear: multiple read-throughs were too time-consuming, and I could not afford them if I wanted to meet my study hour constraint. There must be a better approach.
If you’ve read Actuarial Exam Tactics: Learn More, Study Less, you know where I’m going with this: self-testing is significantly more effective than re-reading. We all knew this when we took the prelim exams – what was the most effective review tool? Practice problems.
When we get to the FSA exams, we are thrown off by the lack of quality practice problems supplied with our exam manuals (I emphasize quality because some FSA manuals provide a high quantity of fairly useless problems).
In absence of a good self-testing mechanism, we’ve fallen back to a more passive review method of re-reading. (For full discussion of this self-testing vs. re-reading, download our free sample chapter).
How can we get back to basics and utilize self-testing for our FSA exam prep?
A New Way of Studying for FSA Exams
To fix the problem of passively re-reading source material and study manuals, I made one simple change: I only did one read-through of the source material, but I used a new note-taking method to make sure I retained the information.
The note-taking method is based on self-testing, and it transformed both the way I read the material and the way I reviewed.
My notes template was very simple, but I will start by describing the 5 main components, and then discuss the implementation.
Description
1. Questions
I write down at least one question for each key concept in the reading.
Don’t limit these questions to simple recall (e.g. List the 4 types of… or What is the definition of…). You can start with these basic questions, but then ask a deeper “How” or “Why” question (e.g. List the 4 types of… Why are these important for a company looking to…).
Creating your own questions may seem difficult or time-consuming, but there are several ways that it will pay off down the road:
- You learn to think like an exam-writer
- Asking questions is critical to learning any subject, and it will especially pay off at work
- You learn to challenge assumptions and figure out what information is important
- You build a set of practice problems to use for self-testing, which is much more effect than just re-reading notes or the source material
I mentioned that I was very disappointed in the quality of questions provided in my manual, so I decided the best route was to create my own.
2. Notes
Write down the solutions to the questions you developed. This will serve as your answer key later on.
3. Successful Recall
This column can be used to track how well you answer each question.
I will discuss practice intervals below, but these columns are used to help you identify which topics are giving you the most trouble over the course of your review.
4. Summary
After working through the details of each reading, it is important to step back and see how those details fit together.
In the Summary, you should condense the key points from the reading in your own words. You can practice the Feynman Technique when writing your summary (details of the Feynman Technique can be found in our sample chapter).
5. Tie to Syllabus
In a few sentences, write down which Learning Objective pertains to the reading, describing what value the reading offers for that topic.
You can also relate the reading to previous ones, making connections across the material.
We all know the importance of referring back to the syllabus, but this simple prompt is a way to implement that practice into your daily study routine.
Process
Now that you understand the template, let’s discuss how to fill it out to maximize benefits from the spacing effect and self-testing (explained in our sample chapter).
At first glance, the template may seem overwhelming with so many different pieces, but you can break it up into three different days:
Day 1: Read
Goal: Read the text and fill out the Questions portion.
Time: About 1 Hour, depending on the length of the reading.
As I preview the reading (discussed in Chapter 3 of Actuarial Exam Tactics: Learn More, Study Less), I fill in the structure of the note template (Reading title, section titles) and develop at least one question for each section.
These questions start with simple recall (List or define….), but they will be expanded later.
After the preview, I perform a full read-through. The goal is to write a question for every key concept in the reading, and mark which page contains the answer. This is when I expand the questions into deeper “How” and “Why” questions.
Day 2: Respond
Goal: Fill out answers to your questions, write the Summary, and write how the reading ties back to the syllabus.
Time: About 45 minutes, depending on the length of the reading.
Read through your questions from the previous day and attempt to write the answer for each one.
Refer back to the appropriate page numbers to check your answers, and use the Successful Recall column to put an “X” if you got the questions right.
For difficult readings, I may not get any questions right on my first attempt. In that case, I re-read the relevant page of the text searching for the answer. Yes, I just discussed the ineffectiveness of re-reading, but when you use it in a targeted manner with a specific question in mind, you can turn it into an active and engaging activity.
I write my summaries in bullet-point format, so I can easily transfer them into my own Condensed Summary by copy-pasting, at a later time.
One week later: Review
Goal: Review your questions, copy your Summary into a separate Condensed Summary document.
Time: 15 minutes.
To utilize the spacing effect and self-testing, I try to answer my questions a second time, again marking an “X” if I answered correctly.
After this second round, you can start to see which concepts you struggle with.
I’ve also used this second review to pare down my Summary into an even shorter version, containing only the main ideas.
I copy-paste this bullet-point list into a separate document for my own Condensed Summary.
There is a lot of value in creating your own condensed summary; you push yourself to decide which material is most important to the syllabus and conduct an 80/20 analysis. You develop a better big-picture understanding of the syllabus topic.
Final review
In the weeks before the exam, I revisit my notes from the earlier objectives and focus on questions that I struggled with (based on the Successful Recall column).
By using this template and focusing heavily on self-testing and “teaching” through my own written summaries, I was able to pass with just one read-through of the material.
This process may seem time-consuming, but it does not take nearly as long as a second read-through of the material, and it is much more effective for learning.
Logistics
If you want to use this style of note-taking, I have a few suggestions for implementation:
- Create this template on a computer (e.g. with Microsoft Word). It is much easier to copy-paste the template than to draw it each time with hand-written notes. Also, it is much easier to insert rows as you read and think of new questions. Most of us can type much faster than we can write, so you can minimize study time by doing electronic notes.
- Use the “Heading 1” format in Microsoft Word for the Reading titles, then you can use the navigation pane to easily jump to the correct reading instead of scrolling.
- Use a cloud storage program like Dropbox so you can access your saved notes from any device. I remember several instances of reviewing questions on my phone while waiting for an oil change or doctor’s appointment. (See Chapter 5 of Actuarial Exam Tactics: Learn More, Study Less for more details on short study sessions).
You can download my template for an easy way to get started: FSA note-taking template
Summary
Regardless of your specific note-taking style, you can greatly improve your effectiveness on the FSA exams if you move away from re-reading material in favor of self-testing review sessions.
The template I use is designed to simultaneously:
- Make you more active while reading
- Build your own database of practice problems for self-testing
- Maximize learning from the spacing effect
- Connect detailed readings to higher level syllabus objectives
- Build a condensed summary
- Save you time by only requiring one read-through of the source material
Because you only need one read-through of the material, you can space out the readings in manageable chunks. I try to leave 3 weeks between my exam and the time when I finish the last reading for doing practice exams and final review.
Please reach out or comment below to let us know your thoughts! We’d love to hear how you prepare for FSA exams, and we’re always looking for best-practices to share.
Study Smart, Pass Fast, Live Life
Mike & Roy