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Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

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Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#91

Post by mirimir »

CydeWeys wrote: post #89
mirimir wrote: post #84

I was gobsmacked by the ranking for zoologists. What sorts of jobs do they have to put them at #2?

Veterinarian. Though you need advanced degrees for that and it also helps to be entrepreneurial, as you make more starting your own practice than joining someone else's. Pre-med should be up there too for the same reason, though there's more diversity in degrees for people who go on to become doctors.

Thanks. Didn't think of that. But right, a zoology BS is the obvious prerequisite for vet school.

But the data would be a lot more useful if aggregated by terminal degree. I tried to look at the data,[0] but it won't display for me. Too much stuff blocked in my Firefox, I guess :(

0) https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-Valu...

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#92

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

This smells suspiciously like a flimsy study designed to reach a predetermined conclusion so as to boost the pool of applicants for systematic salary suppression. Similar to how the STEM "shortage" was manufactured despite no attendant rise in salaries from the supposedly limited supply of workers.

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#93

Post by dajohnson89 »

kaitai wrote: post #85
randomstring wrote: post #32

Having done my BS in Match and CS at a school with a parallel Actuarial program, I got a good look at what being an actuary is about. If you're good at math, and really good at standardized math exams you can advance through the various levels and work your way up the pay-scale ladder. I think this really appeals to people who are good at math, but maybe don't want to go into academia. That said of all the actuaries…

While it's a stereotype, there's a bit of truth to the idea that actuarial jobs appeal to people who want a steady, non-adventurous 9-5. At most places, innovation is not prized in an actuarial position. A certain conservativism is demanded (I'm not talking politics here; I'm talking a cautious nature). That's one reason it's rare to see someone switch from actuarial science to machine learning, for instance. A lot o…

seems like a nice way to make good money, while being able to pursue your hobbies after work.

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#94

Post by dajohnson89 »

stochastastic wrote: post #36
f00_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long did it take you to complete the exams? I think I read a lot of actuaries actually finish them while on the job Think it's possible to self study the exams? Not a likely path for me, but interested in seeing if anyone has done that

Most people get started before their first actuarial job, get a “student” position two to four exams in, and then finish up on the job. I had a math degree and three exams coming out of college and it took me about five years to finish the whole exam sequence. Self study is a viable option, but it helps to have the math and business background.

how much does it pay, as an FSA? I'm considering it as a backup to my dev career.

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#95

Post by danschumann »

p33p wrote: post #57

As an actuary, I can not recommend it to anyone with a technical background. I have degrees in mathematics and actuarial science, and I consider my actuarial science degree completely worthless. A mathematics and/or computer science degree will teach you more in terms of how to think than anyone with an actuarial science degree. If you’d like to take a major where your professors literally teach to the exam/test, the…

It also doesn't factor in the completion % as risk. The harder the degree, the more chance you have of being saddled with debt and no prospects. ( I may have gone the actuarial science route, meanwhile tinkering with websites as a hobby, without considering websites as a career, circa 2004, then failing out of actuarial science, later getting serious about the web stuff ).

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#96

Post by dang »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #92

This smells suspiciously like a flimsy study designed to reach a predetermined conclusion so as to boost the pool of applicants for systematic salary suppression. Similar to how the STEM "shortage" was manufactured despite no attendant rise in salaries from the supposedly limited supply of workers.

Please don't make inflammatory claims based on "smells". That's unsubstantive and just leads to people repeating the same flamey things in every thread. It also breaks several of the site guidelines, such as the ones against flamebait and shallow dismissals.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#97

Post by ThrustVectoring »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #59
rm999 wrote: post #5

Full dataset is here: https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-Valu... For those of you who are wondering, Computer Engineering is 14th, "Mathematics and Computer Science" is 23rd and Computer Science is 30th. If I had to guess, CS has a wider income distribution than many of the higher ranking degrees, which are dominated by engineering degrees (many of which have lower unemployment rates too). The no…

I can't imagine finding a decent job in Finance without connections, I say this as a CFA.

People overestimate how useful the degree is in general. Like, a lot of it is likely folks with connections choosing to get a Finance degree to leverage them. Or for the CS degree, some of the increased income is explained by average IQ (rather than the choice to get into computer programming vs other activities)

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#98

Post by oneplane »

fnayr wrote: post #48
randomstring wrote: post #32

Having done my BS in Match and CS at a school with a parallel Actuarial program, I got a good look at what being an actuary is about. If you're good at math, and really good at standardized math exams you can advance through the various levels and work your way up the pay-scale ladder. I think this really appeals to people who are good at math, but maybe don't want to go into academia. That said of all the actuaries…

Anecdotally, I just came back from New Zealand and was staying at a farm house rented out on Airbnb. The owner was previously an actuary in Sydney, and hated his job so switched mid career to farmer. Pretty large change.

It's not all that surprising when you think about this, the whole actuary field is basically taking people who love doing something, and trimming it down to a factory job for money making companies. As far as I've heard, there is no joy, no creativity and no sense of accomplishment; yet for people who rank salary and perceived status derived from a job title higher than those things, it's the perfect place to be.

(ironically, the people with the capabilities and the people that actually enjoy the lifestyle inside an insurer, bank, or other hypercommercial/hypercapitalistic instance don't overlap that much)

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#99

Post by oneplane »

TylerE wrote: post #63
randomstring wrote: post #32

Having done my BS in Match and CS at a school with a parallel Actuarial program, I got a good look at what being an actuary is about. If you're good at math, and really good at standardized math exams you can advance through the various levels and work your way up the pay-scale ladder. I think this really appeals to people who are good at math, but maybe don't want to go into academia. That said of all the actuaries…

Isn't it sort of a truism that high-paying jobs are not fun? Know who gets paid a lot (relative to education)? Sanitation workers. You know who doesn't? Pilots

It depends on your definition of fun; some people enjoy office work, others don't. Some people derive joy from the status they assume from their job, others don't.

Most 'workable' jobs have one thing in common: you get something out of it. If you are lucky, you get both material and immaterial, but often, people chose to deny themselves one for the other, instead of balancing it (and in turn often don't find themselves in a good work/life balance either).

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#100

Post by sizzle »

amigocontigo wrote: post #53
randomstring wrote: post #32

Having done my BS in Match and CS at a school with a parallel Actuarial program, I got a good look at what being an actuary is about. If you're good at math, and really good at standardized math exams you can advance through the various levels and work your way up the pay-scale ladder. I think this really appeals to people who are good at math, but maybe don't want to go into academia. That said of all the actuaries…

> If you're good at math, and really good at standardized math exams you can advance through the various levels and work your way up the pay-scale ladder I was able to more than double my starting salary (ending at around 135k with bonus) 3 years out of school. I worked in consulting and thought the work was incredibly boring. The main issue is that a lot of people in the field, even those good at passing exams, aren…

What did you leave the field for? What do you do now and are you happier since leaving?
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