Congratulations! You just signed up for a CAS actuarial exam!

Maybe this is the first exam of your actuarial journey. Or maybe you just passed one and rewarded yourself by immediately signing up for another. Either way, you are now at step one of a journey that will consume hundreds of hours of your time over the next few months. A new content outline, filled with material you have likely never seen before, is sitting somewhat menacingly in front of you.

Now what?

For me, the most important thing to remember when building an initial study plan is that it should provide structure but not be needlessly specific. You want a roadmap that lays out where you are going and roughly when you need to get there. There is no reason to pretend you can map out exactly what you will be studying at midnight on a Tuesday three months from now.

Start with the exam date and work backward

My first step is always simple: Find the exam date, put it on my calendar, and work backward.

Ideally, I feel comfortable when I have somewhere around three to four months to prepare. From there, I generally divide my studying into three phases, with each phase laying the groundwork for the next.

The final phase is the easiest one to plan because I know where I want to end up. I like to give myself about five full weeks before the big day that are centered on practice problems and sample exams. At that point, I’d hope to have a pretty good grasp of the concepts, and the focus shifts toward applying them, identifying weak areas, and getting comfortable working under exam conditions.

Working backward again, the middle phase is usually the longest. I might spend roughly eight weeks taking a deeper dive into the material: working through the study manual and source material, watching videos, making and reviewing flashcards, and starting my first pass through practice problems. I try not to rely on the study manual alone because it may not capture every detail contained in the source readings.

The first phase is shorter—maybe the first three weeks of the process—and much higher level. My goal here is not mastery. I mostly want to understand what is on the exam. I will go through summaries, introductory material, and preliminary flashcards, usually without worrying much about practice problems yet.

You want a roadmap that lays out where you are going and roughly when you need to get there. There is no reason to pretend you can map out exactly what you will be studying at midnight on a Tuesday three months from now.

Going through the content outline multiple times also helps me reinforce my grasp of the material. Revisiting each section at increasing levels of depth keeps earlier material fresh, instead of reaching the end and realizing I’ve already forgotten what I studied at the beginning.

Last, within those three or four months, I look at my calendar as a whole. Are there going to be busy weeks at work? Vacations? Trips? Holidays? Other obligations that I already know will cut into study time? If I know I have something significant coming up, I will build some buffer into the appropriate phase.

In general, a good rule of thumb is to always leave yourself some buffer. Something will come up.

Understand what you are studying

Before getting too deep into the material, spend some time understanding the content outline itself.

I look at the domain weights, but I also look at how much material sits behind each section. How long is that portion of the study manual? How many source readings are there? Is the section mostly conceptual, or is it heavily formula- and problem-based?

Knowing this helps determine how much time I initially allocate to each section during my first two phases. A heavily weighted section with a large amount of source material probably deserves more time than a smaller section with a handful of readings.

This is also when I familiarize myself with whatever study materials I am using. How is the manual organized? Are there separate high-level summaries? Videos? Flashcards? Formula sheets? How are the practice problems categorized?

You do not need to understand the content yet. You just want to understand the landscape.

Set weekly targets, not a perfect daily schedule

Early in the process, I prefer weekly goals over rigid daily schedules. Rather than deciding exactly how much I need to study every single day, I find it much more practical to aim for a target of 10 or 12 hours over the course of the week. I can then fit those hours around whatever else is happening.

I also tend to start with lower weekly hour targets and gradually increase them as the exam date gets closer. There is usually no reason to study at maximum intensity in week 1 if the exam is four months away. I find that studying is a little like a muscle: you need to work your way up to the mad dash toward the finish line. If you start too hard, you risk burning yourself out long before you get there.

Work gets busy. Plans come up. Some days you are productive, and some days you are not. Giving yourself flexibility makes the plan much easier to sustain.

Final thoughts

The purpose of an initial study plan is not to perfectly predict the next several months. It is to give yourself direction, establish realistic milestones, and hold yourself accountable as you work toward passing the exam.

Build enough structure that you know where you are going, but not so much that the schedule becomes unrealistic the moment life gets in the way. Know roughly when you want to finish each phase, understand how the content outline fits within those phases, and leave yourself some room for things to go wrong.

Your initial schedule will almost certainly change. But remember, that does not mean the plan failed. It just means it did what it was supposed to do: give you a place to start.