I'm three exams into the CAS track and starting to seriously recalculate whether my original 6-year plan was realistic. Exams 5 and 6 took me about 400 hours of study each, and I've heard 7 and 8 require closer to 500-600. My employer covers fees and gives me 10 days of study leave per exam, but the rest comes out of evenings and weekends.
The pass rates for the upper exams are humbling. MAS-I and MAS-II sit around 55-60% in recent sessions, but once you hit Exam 7 you're looking at 40-45% pass rates historically. That means statistically most people are resitting at least once, which adds a year or more to the timeline even if you're well prepared.
One thing I'd push back on is the advice to rush through the early exams. I know people who blasted through Exams 1-3 in two years and then hit a wall because they hadn't built the intuition for the underlying concepts. Taking an extra sitting to really internalize the material paid off for me on Exam 6 where earlier probability concepts came back in unexpected ways.
Your instinct about not rushing is right. The candidates who really understood the P and FM material sailed through the upper exams relatively smoothly. The ones who memorized shortcuts hit a wall around Exam 6 almost every time.
Exam 7 is a different kind of hard than the earlier quantitative exams. It's less about calculations and more about understanding reserving concepts deeply enough to write coherent essay answers under time pressure. The format shift catches a lot of people off guard.
I'd budget 550 hours minimum and start the past paper essays early, not just the multiple choice.
Seven years is the median for a lot of people I know who work full-time without study time built into their job hours. The folks finishing in five are usually at companies that give substantial dedicated prep time or are working reduced hours.
The CAS online resources are better than they used to be. The study notes aren't free but they're worth it compared to building your own from scratch. Third-party prep courses helped me most on Exams 5 and 6 where the syllabus breadth is genuinely overwhelming.
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