
Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-10/the-new-american-dream-job-is-pretty-dull
======
p33p
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, then you’re in luck, because
that’s what your degree will get.

Having been in the workforce a handful of years now, there are a lot of
intelligent actuaries and also a lot of arrogance about the work they have
done.

I personally am frustrated with the career, but the salary in a low cost of
living area makes it difficult to transition into something else.

Given all of this, the valuation of how majors are ranked is silly to me. The
criteria almost automatically weight actuarial science as the favorite.

~~~
onion2k
As the brother of an actuary, one of my favourite jokes is "Actuaries are
people who tried accountancy but found it too exciting." :)

~~~
kitd
I started my programming career at an actuarial consultancy. My favourite was
"There was once an actuary who was so boring, all the other actuaries
noticed".

Actually I found the partners to be great people. I think some went out of
their way to be unlike the image. I also think their particular skills can be
applied more widely than the profession normally encompasses. A lot of the
actuaries I met backed horses and I'm sure they had an unfair advantage!

AIUI, in the UK at least, it, along with veterinaries, require the longest
period of training before chartered qualification.

------
randomstring
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 I went to school with, none liked their jobs
and all eventually moved on to do something else.

~~~
amigocontigo
> 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't particularly good at advanced modeling or programming. This means no
one can or is interested in peer-reviewing complex models and as a result you
end up spending most of your time shoveling numbers around in Excel. It was
also very stressful. Leaving the profession, despite the time I sunk in it,
was the best decision I ever made.

~~~
mrep
>> 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.

Have you considered software engineering because current pay starts at around
150k in big tech and I'm now making 215k 2.5 years out of college? I say this
because I work with a bunch of math and physics major people so it is
definitely possible to switch careers (a lot of the advanced software we use
utilizes complex concepts in physics and math so they are highly valued,
though, you will definitely need to know basic algorithms and data structures
but that isn't too hard to learn especially compared to advanced math and
physics in my opinion).

~~~
Nursie
> Have you considered software engineering because current pay starts at
> around 150k in big tech and I'm now making 215k

This is _highly_ area dependent though, surely?

In the UK, outside of London, those figures would likely be $50k and $60k

~~~
rezeroed
Yeah, I work in Gherkin area of London, many insurance companies there. The
actuarial types I overhear at the coffee-shops are earning around 3x my
software dev salary.

~~~
Nursie
/waves from just behind St Kats Docks by Tower Bridge

As a contractor, I'm making about 3x what I was for my last perm salary. But
only if I work in London. I'm lucky to get two thirds of this near where I
live, and AFAICT the perm staff in most places I've contracted nearer to home
get paid really terribly.

~~~
rezeroed
Ah, nice, I used to work there, in the royal mint. /wave Enjoyed watching
yachts prepare for races; now I watch insurance people.

------
stochastastic
As an actuary I don’t think I would recommend it for most people. At the very
least, keep your options open by getting a math or CS degree and passing a
couple of exams on the side. I feel like this really glosses over the weight
of the credentialling process. It also doesn’t appear to talk about the
oversupply of entry level applicants.

~~~
secabeen
Interesting. Do you have any articles about the oversupply of entry-level
actuaries? Actuarial science was a career path I considered, but I ended up in
systems/network/devops instead.

~~~
fcuck_actuarial
Annecdotal, but I've experience this personally. These rankings grossly
neglect the availability of entry level jobs. And you end up studying a bunch
of stuff that is borderline useless for any other career path on a practical
level.

I consider trying to become an actuary one of the greatest mistakes and waste
of time in my life.

When I switched to programming, it was like some kind of magical door opened
and all of a sudden and the process of finding an entry level job was no
longer the equivalent of banging my head against the wall, repeatedly.

~~~
tudorconstantin
Putting it in another perspective, perhaps that experience made you appreciate
programming and software industry more. It might be a high price you paid (the
years of pseudo useless studies), but you'll think twice when considering to
change industries.

I worked in sales for a few years and even became a regional sales manager
before switching to programming 12 years ago. Now, whenever I see the IT
related problems (like bad programming parctices, lousy code, bad
architectures and so on), I remember how bad and really unfixable things can
be (for me as an employee) in the rest of the industries and love programming
even more.

------
rm999
Full dataset is here: [https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-
Most-Valu...](https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-
Valuable-College-Majors-Ranked)

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 non-STEM degrees that beat out CS (assuming we
don't count social sciences) are Finance, Public Policy, Economics, and
Agricultural Economics. Cool dataset!

~~~
vostok
I'm very surprised that economics and finance are higher than computer
science. I would have expected that corporate finance jobs would have brought
the average below that of CS.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
The value of any degree is always going to be measured against supply and
demand. There has been a huge push to get more people into computer science,
thus increasing the supply beyond the rate of demand. Declining wages would be
the logical conclusion (and motivation) for this.

~~~
vostok
Do you have a source saying that they're declining?

~~~
TangoTrotFox
My comment was referencing the fact that computer science is ranked 30th by
their metric of 'value', which does indeed seem to be much lower than one
would have expected not that long ago. In terms of specific numbers, I'm also
very curious but it's surprisingly difficult to find precise numbers. So what
I did was grabbed an archive of the Burea of Labor services page on software
developers. Here it is:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20130305174000/https://www.bls.g...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130305174000/https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-
and-Information-Technology/Software-developers.htm)

Unfortunately that only provides 3 data points. The first number is the
nominal value, the second is the inflation adjusted to 2016.

2010 = $90,530 = $99,643

2012 = $93,350 = $97,584

2016 = $102,280 = $102,280

Not sure what can be taken away from the numbers as there's only 3 points and
with mixed directionality. But probably better than nothing. Do let me know if
you find more indicative figures.

------
dlevine
I had a friend from college who became an actuary (he was a business major in
college). It sounds like, once you finish the first several actuarial exams,
you are pretty much set. You don't even need a degree in actuarial science,
but it probably makes the exams easier.

His job was pretty easy, and since he knew some basic programming, was able to
build some Excel macros and wow the people he worked with. The work sounded
less exciting than being a programmer working at a startup, but pays well and
he has lived in Bermuda and London.

~~~
tfehring
>It sounds like, once you finish the first several actuarial exams, you are
pretty much set.

Typically you need ~3 exams to get a job in the field. Then it's a total of 7
exams for associateship and 10 for fellowship (for candidates starting today -
it used to be fewer), plus various online courses throughout the process. You
can stop at the associate level, but it limits your advancement opportunities
at most companies.

If you're reasonably good at both math and memorization, the exams range from
~50-100 hours of studying each for the first few to ~300-400 each for the
later ones. Usually about half of those hours are on company time once you're
working in the field, though exam season is still pretty miserable.

>His job was pretty easy, and since he knew some basic programming, was able
to build some Excel macros and wow the people he worked with.

This is still common, but it's getting rarer every year. At a minimum, every
entry-level candidate my company hires nowadays has taken a couple of intro
programming courses (usually in Python or Java) and knows a bit of VBA, SQL,
and/or R on top of that. The field has been attracting lots of young people
who might have otherwise become programmers, myself included.

>The work sounded less exciting than being a programmer working at a startup

Probably true in general, but some actuarial roles are more exciting than
others. I was bored to death in my first actuarial job (financial reporting)
but transitioned pretty early to a much more interesting role. It helps that
I'm doing some ML-heavy modeling, meaning that I get to learn new frameworks
in addition to the standard Excel + RDBMS stuff. Working half the hours of a
programmer at a startup for the same pay and better benefits is also a plus.

With all of that being said, I'm still semi-actively looking to leave the
field. While I love what I'm working on right now, I'm concerned about getting
pidgenholed into the field (and into insurance more generally) in the long
term, especially since I'd likely end up in a much less interesting role at
some point.

~~~
madeuptempacct
So, what's the "light at the end of the tunnel" here? What's the expected,
realistic salary after all ten exams?

The lure of the CFA is that $250,000 is not unusual. Except most people
finishing their CFA never get an analyst job, so it's kind of a moot point.

~~~
tfehring
$120k-$150k is the norm for new fellows in my area. People typically reach
that level around 5-7 years of experience nowadays. If you can't or don't want
to manage people, your salary probably won't get much higher than that, but
directors (managing teams of ~10-15 actuaries) make ~$250k-$300k at my company
and VPs (managing ~2-4 directors) probably make ~$400k-$500k.

Also, keep in mind that the hours are much shorter than what CFAs would
typically work - most actuaries outside of consulting rarely work over 45
hours a week.

------
s0rce
The average income for biochemists and molecular biologists is >$100k? Is this
heavily skewed by doctors who did biology as a pre-med degree?

~~~
dekhn
long ago when I was considering majors (1991) molecular biologists made $70K.
This makes sense to me- a scientist at a major pharma is going to make over
$100K if they are an expert in their field and have 5-10 years experience
($100K in the bay area is a starting salary for many software engineers).

Mol Bio has several job outcomes- the worst is lab tech, which alone in the
bay area can be $60K, the best is CEO/Founder ($1+M/year), with professor
($150K) in the middle.

~~~
s0rce
Most numbers I've seen put the average salary for a biology professor around
$95k, $150 would be on the higher end.

~~~
ylem
Could it be a question of 9 month salary? If you have a couple of grants, you
can pay yourself a summer salary. It's a strange system

------
learnstats2
Students of financial decision-making come out top of financial decision-
making tree.

Surely it would be embarrassing if they didn't.

------
nateburke
One thing missing from this discussion is the effect of the well-established
exam-based credentialing system on the profession as a barrier to entry.

Does it counterbalance at all the kind of ageism that folks working as 45+
software engineers sometimes encounter?

This is a sincere question, as I can also would not be surprised if insurance
companies' CFOs would be the _first_ people to recognize the additional costs
associated with insuring older workers with families, especially in the post-
demutualization era.

~~~
amigocontigo
In my experience (as an actuary) dealing with CFOs - this thought never
crosses their mind. Even the most incompetent C-suite execs I have dealt with
understand the value of hiring the best people they can find.

In general, companies don't deal with rising healthcare costs by hiring
younger, less experienced workers. Instead, they restructure their insurance
plans to alleviate the increase in insurance premiums. This part of what
health actuaries (at least on the consulting side of things) do on a daily
basis.

------
user1324345
these metrics are always pure garbage. Someone comes up with an equation like:

(start salary) + (median salary) + .5 * (job availablilty) + .75 * (growth)
... etc

then they rank everything, tweek it, make an article.

The scary part is people will read this and parrot this information for
potentially years, "did you know actuary is the best job???"

This is actually how misinformation spreads.

~~~
bitxbit
Bingo. They've been saying this about actuarial science for a very long time.
But they fail to mention that (1) there aren't that many positions available,
(2) for students smart enough to qualify for the positions (passing the CAS
etc) you are far better off going into finance or economics as an
undergraduate, and (3) most importantly, actuarial science sets you up for a
very specialized and narrow career path.

~~~
stochastastic
FWIW, I think there is a risk-reward trade off involved for many of us that
end up going the actuarial route. I was broke coming out of college, without
much of a network or pedigree to fall back on and the prospect of a solidly
middle-to-upper class income drew me in. No regrets (other than no
multimillion dollar startup exit), but I wouldn’t recommend it for most
people.

------
Bootvis
I’m an actuary (not of the qualified variety) and don’t share the observations
made in most of the comments here:

\- I get to spend most of the time in R working on cash flow modeling;

\- We get to use a lot of data which makes for interesting challenges;

\- I get a say in how we solve problems IT wise;

\- We need to understand the business to do our own modeling correctly;

\- Pay isn’t that great.

AMA

P.S. I’m in Europe

~~~
DavidHm
I suspect this is very much dependent on the country.

My bachelor was in stats & actuarial sciences (though I never worked in the
field), and in my country there's a big shortage of qualified actuaries. So
the average salaries are pretty high and it's a safe and stable work (albeit
dreadfully boring, which is why I never went into the field)

------
dv_dt
I think I'm most surprised that zoology is ranked second. Wondering how common
an occupation that could possibly be?

~~~
aphextron
It's the number one undergrad degree for veterinarians. Private vet practices
in upscale areas are insanely profitable.

~~~
grouseway
And for some it is a very stressful job. They have a very high suicide rate:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/)

"The rate of suicide in the veterinary profession has been pegged as close to
twice that of the dental profession, more than twice that of the medical
profession (2), and 4 times the rate in the general population (3)."

~~~
harshreality
correlation or causation?

I could easily imagine that more depressed people pursue veterinary jobs
because being around animals makes them less depressed.

~~~
creaghpatr
I imagine vets have to frequently put animals down and have those talks with
the owners, I could see that being a huge buzzkill

~~~
c0nducktr
Especially if they owners simply can't afford to pay to keep the animal alive.

Imagine being a surgeon and telling someone that their child needs their
appendix removed, and the parent sees the cost and says "eh, let's just put
them down".

Vets have to deal with that all the time.

------
alouisos
Beware, actuarial science will be replaced by AI and the incentives of
insurance is high to replace this workforce with AI. Believe me, I have been
doing an AI startup in exactly this space

~~~
thedevil
I wouldn't be too confident in that. Actuaries are not able to implement the
models they'd like to. Regulators don't like complex models and they don't
like models with disparate impact. Or models that make some risks (accurately)
expensive.

I'm a developer now but by last few years in actuary work were mostly spent
helping insurance companies deal with regulation. We did some modeling with
with machine learning but ultimately the models that got approved had to be
simple (compared to machine learning). My job before that was a lot about
internal negotiations with other departments.

Better models were not the main bottleneck.

~~~
clarkeni
Absolutely, great points.

I think there could be scope to use ML on the pricing side however, while
leaving the reserving models explainable to regulators.

------
dalbasal
The remember this tidbit from college, where actuarial studies was ranked as
the highest earning qualifications.

I think this comes down to a combination of (1) being relatively difficult
and/or esoteric, so the pool of people is small and (2) having a strong guild
structure which ensures a "market" structure that favours qualified) chartered
individuals. Apart from being operationally important, actuaries are part of
insurance companies CYA.

Ultimately, even today, when a profession can impose structure on itself (eg
lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc.) that both admits/certifies a limited
number of professionals _and_ requires certified professionals for certain
tasks... It still tends to work out well for members.

For the most part this is legacy, and is found in older professions.

If insurance was invented today, actuaries would probably be data scientists.

------
m00n
Interesting to see, how the usually data driven crowd on this site largely
dismisses a data point and the usual talking points are reversed:

40h work-weeks that pay great -> Must be boring.

Economics study is done by economists -> Probably skewed.

How dare these people * equating carreer value with expected profits * using a
weighted average to come up with a number * expect candidates to pass hard
stats tests before constructing insurance products

Programming in JS web frameworks is clearly superior to any work done using
Excel and be it supplying the nation with health coverage. /s

------
DylanDmitri
This is partially a reporting bias issue, because these are average values
across all colleges. The actuarial exams set the bar high for everyone
regardless of college. Looking at degrees only across top colleges would paint
a different picture, probably with law and business jumping significantly. Ivy
Leagues don't offer act sci majors, students just take economics instead.

------
madrox
I did a stats undergrad at one of the few schools to offer that kind of
program. Many of my peers went on to be actuaries.

I'd actually recommend any undergrad program that has a strong underpinning in
statistical thinking. It's very difficult to learn without formal education
and is oh so very useful in so many fields right now.

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

~~~
CydeWeys
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.

~~~
mirimir
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...](https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-Valuable-
College-Majors-Ranked)

~~~
CydeWeys
Yes, data by terminal degree would be a lot more useful. Zoology is basically
useless at earning more money than a generic degree unless you go onto
becoming a full-on vet, so it's not the zoology degree that's increasing
income but the graduate degree. And that graduate degree is _expensive_.
Contrast with CS, which didn't make this list, but which by itself does
substantially increase income over the generic undergrad degree.

------
dmhn
The problem with an Actuarial career is that there is no room to advance. When
my father finished graduate school, he became an actuary. Fortunately, the
insurance company went under, and he moved to finance only a few years later.

~~~
clarkeni
A good proportion (often all) of C-level insurance executives were actuaries
that moved up the ranks. I would say it has quite good advancement
opportunities.

------
djsumdog
I had a friend who wanted to be a radiologist because he uses some income
calculators and decided that would be what would give him the biggest return
on his investment. Guy had trouble passing Anatomy I; think he had to take it
twice. From the way he talked, I don't think he realized it was a full MD
position; residency and all. Guy was not suited to be a doctor.

It took him years, marriage to an abusive woman, the Air Force and a divorce
to finally get out of the idea he would be a doctor. Recently he tried to hire
me to write software for a "Crypto currency hedge fund."

TL;DR If you chase after money, you're going to miss out on life. The US
market wants to turn University into a huge investment you need an ROI on to
lock you into a career path you'll probably hate. It was not like that for me,
and I only graduated 12 years ago. Small state schools were affordable.

I learned a lot in school, but today I can't even recommend it to people
starting out, unless they can do it with little to no debt. I cannot recommend
bootcamp or other for-profit schools.

I wish it was easier for people to find something they love doing and not have
to worry about money.

------
KZeillmann
Underlying study: [https://www.bankrate.com/career/most-valuable-college-
majors...](https://www.bankrate.com/career/most-valuable-college-majors/)

~~~
Hasz
Actual breakdown of all the majors they found

[https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-
Valu...](https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-Valuable-
College-Majors-Ranked)

Amazingly enough, Bankrate.com uploaded it to... scribd.

------
sjb554
Consulting actuary here. I majored in Econ, started taking exams after I
graduated.

I don't really see the value in the actuarial degree, but I do see the value
in taking the exams. Some people might be frustrated with their place in a
given company, but overall it is a great career. One of the keys is to stay up
on current tech and always be learning new things. It seems pretty easy to get
stuck into a position where you are making baskets all day.

------
cluoma
I started out wanting to be an actuary. Did all the preliminary tests I was
able to do before associate level. Like many I bought into the 'actuary is a
great, high-paying career' line that was touted during my university.

The job market in Canada is incredibly saturated though. Having all tests out
of the way was not even enough to stand out it seems. And I ended up moving to
Europe to work in data science.

------
clarkeni
To offer a dissenting opinion, I have found stimulating work in actuary -
having worked in economic scenario generation and market risk modelling.

But I have also had actuarial work that was closer to accounting than I would
have liked. Certainly you have to pick your roles carefully - which is perhaps
only feasible in large markets.

------
jamesrcole
I find it a bit sad that "valuable" is, without any comment, treated as
synonymous with "profitable".

~~~
m00n
What interpretation of "valuable" do you propose instead? A discussion of
remuneration was exactly what I expected when reading the headline.

~~~
jamesrcole
First of all, there doesn't have to be a single definition. Here's some other
factors that could be part of "value":

\- degree of job satisfaction

\- how much that sort of work benefits the world

It's very narrow to equate value _only with_ money.

And because I know someone is going to misinterpret what I'm saying, I'm not
saying there's anything wrong with equating value with money. It's just a bit
sad when that's all value is equated with, and more so when it's just an
unstated assumption like in the article.

You can compare all this with how college degrees used to be about more than
just getting a job. The goal used to include making the person a well rounded
person. These days it seems treated solely in financial terms.

~~~
m00n
I was thinking along these lines, too. But the problem with job satisfaction
is: Do you rely on self-reported job satisfaction or objective quantitities
like absenteeism or turnover?

Both are hard to make comparable between different fields: In some (think med,
law etc) the cost of education will prohibit changing careers, regardless of
if you make millions as patent lawyer or heart surgeon (assuming that the
latter adds more "value to society"). So I think it is hard to come up with a
consistent objective measure of satisfaction. On the other hand, if you poll
people, you might find, that fine arts majors were very happy with their
college life, but actually work in a different field to pay rent (I happen to
know some music majors).

The problem with the societal benefit definition is: It very much depends on
your own system of beliefs. Is an education in business and employing 5
people, more or less valuable than a job as a veterinary? Since most of the
undergrad majors also have a variety of possible jobs they could lead into,
this is even harder to quantify.

So maybe just do away with rankings :-)

~~~
jamesrcole
Just because something is difficult to quantify doesn't meant it doesn't exist
or is unimportant.

------
rubatuga
Where’s computer science?

~~~
pkaye
There is no longer any science in computers. Going forward everything is going
to be involving some combinations of Javascript, distributed systems and
machine learning.

~~~
penagwin
Next study: "Distributed machine learning javascript transpilers ranks #1 in
jobs for 2019)

------
azhenley
Are there any software engineering projects for undergrad CS students that
will get them exposure to actuarial science? I know very, very little about
actuarial science, but I think helping my students learn about it could really
benefit them.

~~~
p33p
They would be better off getting exposure to anything and everything related
to finance, statistics, and operations research. Actuarial science specific
topics include pricing and reserving of insurance products. I would love to
see more CS students with an understanding of finance and time value of money.

------
DocEasyE
Yea i was wondering how pharmacy is higher than computer science, that degree
is over flooded and the way cvs and walgreens work not a lot of room for
pharmacist, that unemployment has to be wrong

------
johnhenry
I studied mathematics in college with the express intent of becoming an
actuary when I graduated. Once I had graduated, I decided not to be an actuary
mostly because I was sick of taking tests.

------
ArtWomb
They also recruit right out of Statistics programs. So you might be able to
pursue alternatives in Data Science if you find the field not to your liking.

------
freefrancisco
According to analysis performed by bank actuaries.

------
unixhero
Reminds me of the movie Kafka. Must watch!

------
te0006
that short-lived moment of hope when I misread the beginning of the title as
"actual science"

------
hnaccy
What are all the zoologists doing?

------
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.

~~~
dang
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
robertAngst
>Actuarial science majors earn an average annual salary of $108,658

Uh, so where is engineering here? 115k/yr

I have the ability to engineer solutions to problems, not saying an Actuarial
Science student cant build things or root cause issues- but there is a
thought-process.

