Exam MAS-II Details
Below we’ll lay out everything you need to know for your MAS-II exam from registration details to exam day to what to do after you receive your results.
Exam Offerings
Exam MAS-II is offered twice a year, once in the Spring (late April/early May) and once in the Fall (late October/early November).
Exam Format
40+ Questions of 5 Different Exam Item Types, Computer-Based Testing Administered by Pearson VUE
Exam Duration
4 Hours + One 15-min Break
Registration Info
- Visit the CAS website's Exam Registration page.
- Register online before the registration deadline (you'll need to create a user account if you do not have one already).
- Alternatively, you can register by paper by filling out the form and mailing it to the CAS before the registration deadline.
- Choose your exam location. CAS examination centers are listed on the Exam Registration page of the CAS website.
Exam Day and Results: Things To Keep In Mind
Don't forget your must-haves for exam day! Know what to bring and what to do after you pass the exam
What to Bring
- A government-issued photo ID that includes a signature
- Recommended Calculator: TI-30XS MultiView
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Exam Results
You’ll receive your official final score approximately 8 weeks after your exam.
Passing candidate numbers will be emailed out between 2 PM to 3 PM Eastern Time on the day that they become available.
Several days after the email is distributed to candidates, a link to the list of passing candidates will be posted on the CAS website and candidates will receive the result in mail.
Passing the Exam
Exam 5 is the next suggested exam after passing MAS-II. You will also need to complete 3 CAS Data and Insurance Series Courses (DISCs) (previously Online Courses) if you have not already. If you have passed IFM, you are exempted from CAS DISC DA (Introduction to Data Analytics).
Expert Tips: Helpful insights from our coaches
Our coaches know this exam inside and out. Check out their expert tips for achieving a passing score.
Be sure to understand the concept of bias-variance tradeoff and how it applies to different statistical learning methods. Do not mistake a sample property/quantity for a population property/quantity.
Larry Saw Content Coach
Focus on really mastering the Statistical Learning portion of the exam (Section 3 in our course and Domain C on the MAS-II content outline). It's by far the highest-weighted portion of the exam.
Austin Wallestad Content Coach
Don't be afraid to skip questions. Make sure to give yourself enough time to ace easy questions that may be at the end of your exam. Remember, easy questions are worth just as much as hard questions.
Terence Chow VP of ProductMake sure you can do most of the easy and intermediate questions. You can pass the exam without ever worrying about an advanced question you haven't seen before.
Larry Saw Content CoachOn the exam, questions will roughly follow the ordering of topics on the syllabus. There are a few ways to use this to your advantage. It allows you to compartmentalize information and approach the exam in a more systematic way. It also means you can strategically answer questions out of order based on your confidence with certain topics. In addition, it can reduce test anxiety by providing a sense of familiarity and control.
Austin Wallestad Content Coach
Course Offerings: Topics and Weights
- 20%
How do you combine a small amount of particular data from your customers with a large dataset of general data from the whole industry? That's the subject of credibility.
Classical credibility uses sample sizes, Bayesian credibility uses priors and posteriors, and Bühlmann credibility uses means and variances.
You will also learn about the non-parametric empirical Bayes method.
- 29 Efficient, bite-sized Learning Manuals
- 289 Minutes of high-quality Learning Videos
- 26 Assignment Questions
- 288 Quiz and Exams questions
- 15%
Linear mixed models are a type of statistical model that can be used to analyze data that has both fixed and random effects. Fixed effects are those that are of interest to the researcher, while random effects are those that are not of interest, but may still influence the data.
As an extension to simple and multiple linear regression introduced in MAS-I, linear mixed models allow us to model data that do not fit the assumptions.
On top of the models themselves, we will be covering model inference and diagnostics.
- 22 Efficient, bite-sized Learning Manuals
- 217 Minutes of high-quality Learning Videos
- 16 Assignment Questions
- 81 Quiz and Exams questions
- 45%
With big data and data analytics on the rise, it is crucial for actuaries to be well-equipped with statistical tools. In this section, we will learn modeling to help us identify patterns in datasets.
Remember the statistical learning methods we learned in MAS-I? In MAS-II, we will continue our discussion with a variety of non-parametric supervised learning and unsupervised learning approaches.
We will also cover several other performance measures to evaluate model quality.
- 54 Efficient, bite-sized Learning Manuals
- 448 Minutes of high-quality Learning Videos
- 52 Assignment Questions
- 312 Quiz and Exams questions
- 20%
In this section, we will explore time series models and other important concepts related to time series, such as stationarity and autoregression. We will also learn about different time series models and forecast future observations.
- 22 Efficient, bite-sized Learning Manuals
- 196 Minutes of high-quality Learning Videos
- 29 Assignment Questions
- 144 Quiz and Exams questions