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Actuarial Science Vs Engineering

Actually I'm in dilemma now, whether to choose A-Levels in MCKL or Diploma in Electrical Engineering(Communication) in UTM. To be frankly, Engineering were my preferred courses since I was in primary school, but well, apparently I don't really know a lot about this course. Until when I was Form 4, I suddenly fell in love with this very particular course - Actuarial Science. I had never heard about it before when my dad(a banker) mentioned about it in a random talk on a journey back to home from a vacation. Curiosity aroused from the talk, and I straight away did researches about Actuarial Science once I reached home. Unexpectedly, I fell in love with this course, and kept on telling myself that I want to study this course as my future career! 


Apparently, my knowledge about Actuarial Science is definitely more than that in Engineering courses. I knew that to become a qualified actuary, one have to sacrifice a lot of precious time to study for the series of professional actuarial exams, and certainly it is a very very tough task. Yes, I knew about this and I'm still wanting to continue this course, still wanting to fulfill my dream to be a qualified actuary, with perseverance, deep passion and hard work. In fact, I think I owned most of the criteria needed to become an actuary. Unfortunately, JPA don't offer this course anymore this year, and I have to apply Science as my alternative, since Actuarial Science can be one of the majors in Science in most of the universities abroad. Having my back up plan to study A-Levels in MCKL is seemingly a great decision and a good choice for me to continue my pursuit of my dream since I would be taking Maths, Further Maths, Economics and Accounting(a perfect combination for actuarial studies) in the A-Levels. Well, even though I have got 100% tuition waiver scholarship from the college, I still have to pay RM8-9k for the overall 1.5 year A-Levels programme in MCKL, which is considerably cheaper as compared to other private colleges such as Taylor's, Sunway, etc. 

Undoubtedly, taking A-Levels on my own would be very risky upon the completion of the A-Levels programme. Albeit I might get 4As for my A-Levels and some offer letters from top notch universities abroad if I study hard and smart enough, but the financial constraint would be always the problem I would face. How if I can't get any scholarship even though with the above criteria? How can i fund my study abroad, maybe in UK, US, Australia or Canada? Well, the worst scenario would be failing to get any scholarship or financial aid and ending up to study Actuarial Science in UTAR, and definitely I would still need to pay for the study there, maybe supported by PTPTN loan. However, I don't think I am ready enough to face the worst scenario, and certainly I won't be really like to study in UTAR due to various factors.

A few days ago, I have successfully got Diploma in Electrical Engineering(Communication) in UTM, and that seems like my old lover. My parents kept on saying that E&E is a very good course, and you would be regretting for not grabbing this perfect opportunity, for not every non-Bumi can get. For me, it would not be any problem if I study Electrical Engineering cause it is still involving Maths and Physics, in which both of these are my favorite subjects back in high school and I was able to score A+ for both. However, I knew nothing about Electrical Engineering, besides knowing it for involving Physics, Maths, diodes, transformer, voltage and so on. That's all! About the working environment of electrical engineer, I have totally no idea. However, Diploma in E&E is definitely the safer, smoother, and cheaper pathway as compared to pathway towards my dream, which would be involving A-Levels and luck, and that would be extremely risky for the latter one. 

For the working environment of actuary, I knew that an actuary would be facing lots of computer to build actuarial models by using actuarial softwares (Prophet, Moses, etc), meeting lots of clients to explain the highly sophisticated actuarial models to them, pricing insurance premiums, calculating and managing risk that would be faced by the community to protect security of the financial world. Ironically, sometimes I do cross over some thoughts that I can't cope up with actuarial studies, as I have never study it back in high school, for the most thing that I studied were merely simple Probability, Probability Distribution and Statistics in Additional Maths, and some theories in Principle of Accounts. 

Precious comments and advices are very much appreciated, and thanks in advance! =)

Comments

  1. Nice post, kind of drawn out though. Really good subject matter though.

    ReplyDelete

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