Online Sample Exams
The Society of Actuaries (SOA) is interested in supporting candidates as they prepare for the preliminary exams. To that end the SOA has begun to offer online sample exams for some of the preliminary exams. Available at no cost, the sample exams select questions and solutions in an online exam experience that resembles the computer-based testing employed for most of the SOA’s preliminary exams. Questions have been coded to meet the exam learning objectives and ensure candidates receive a balanced yet randomized set of questions each time they repeat a sample exam. The current questions are drawn from existing sample questions.
The procedure used to create the SOA’s actuarial exams from a large pool of items is sophisticated and takes into account different factors, including overall exam difficulty and coverage of the learning objectives. The procedure used for these online simulations does not take into account the overall exam difficulty. Therefore, while falling within the learning objectives for the exam, the items in these sample exams may not be representative of the average difficulty of an actual exam.
If you have questions or technical difficulties with an online sample exam, please write to us at education@soa.org.
Reporting Errors: If you find a possible error on a question or solution, please take a screen shot of the question/solution and send it to education@soa.org with the subject line, “Sample Exam ____ (P or FM) Error.” We are unable to track questions by question number as the questions are randomized.