So I went off to my liberal arts college of choice and majored in applied mathematics. I devoured as many probability and statistics courses as were offered. I picked up microeconomics and finance to cover my bases in the dismal science, and I kept my eyes open for the inevitable secret doorway that led to vast riches in the field of decision science.

Well, I'm still looking. But I learned about the Society of Actuaries and I found a career that had promise.

Actuaries spend their days using historical measures of risk to project future occurrences and put price tags on those future occurrences given all available economic information. In the case of insurance companies, the risks are deaths, car accidents, medical claims, fires, etc. In the case of pension consultants, the risks include retirement, death, disability, and termination of employment (of pension plan participants, not of the actuary!). In both cases, assumptions broad and narrow are made about interest rates, employment and mortality trends, economic conditions, regulatory actions, etc. Naturally, this has long been considered a dream job for math graduates of American and Canadian universities.

The Society of Actuaries and the Casualty Actuarial Society offer a certification program that allows people to earn recognition in the industry by passing a series of exams. The exams start out with a definite academic bent, testing theoretical concepts from calculus, economics, and statistics. As the series progresses the exams begin to test concepts that apply only to practitioners of actuarial careers, and the final test is subject-specific. [A redesign of the education system slated to take effect in 2005 may allow candidates to earn progress through the exam system by showing proof of applicable university coursework. Since I am trying like hell to finish my exams before the end of 2004 I haven't studied this program and I won't comment on it.] In either case, the program is meant to allow smart people with limited knowledge of the field to access it easily. Take it for a test drive, take a couple of exams that test stuff that you already know, and see how you like it before making a commitment.

I learned about the field when my uncle, who is a consultant and office manager for one of the larger firms in the pension consulting field, gave me a packet of old exams and information about the profession during my sophomore year in college. After showing me that the entry-level exams were nothing I hadn't done twice before, and telling me about the work he did both as a pension consultant and as an insurance actuary earlier in his career, I decided that I would take the first two exams and consider the career. I set my mind to finding an actuarial internship for the summer of my junior year. I accepted an offer from Equitable Life Assurance Company (part of AXA) and headed to New York for the summer.

At Equitable, they had a structured internship program that was designed to show interns a little of everything. Our work assignments were spread throughout the actuarial function, but we boarded together at a townhouse-style dorm at Columbia and shared war stories every night. In addition, we attended a series of sessions at which Equitable employees from throughout the firm explained their department's job and how it related to the life of an entry-level actuary. The main highlight of a career in insurance is that you won't be spending a long time trying to finish your exams: insurance companies tend to grant company study time liberally in the hopes that you'll achieve your credentials quickly and thus be available for the more creative revenue-generating tasks. The downside is that when you are in your 20s, at your energetic best with minimal personal distractions holding you back from achieving anything you can conceive... well, they've got a few plug-and-chug reports for you to run. That's about it.

At least, that was my take. Instead of an insurance career, I took a career detour to work on Wall Street during the go-go 1990s, right before the formation and subsequent bursting of the dot-com bubble. There, I learned that the financial field had started to cherry pick the actuarial profession for people to help them understand the nature of their risk. As yet, though, the numbers were few and the risks pretty complex. When my time on Wall Street drew to its end I contacted several people from the field of pension consulting, and I ended up relocating to Washington to join the Retirement practice at Watson Wyatt. For everything that insurance was -- internally focused, slow starting, predictable and relatively unchanging - pension consulting was something else. Clients with pension and health plans are the reason for being. Entry-level analysts do immense amounts of work with demographic data and financial reporting right away. Projects come up that can not be anticipated, and demands are constantly shifting. As actuarial jobs go - as any job goes - it's an interesting work day.

I saw 5 recruiting classes come in while I worked for Watson Wyatt, and I notice two employment trends worth mentioning. #1: people who had previously passed exams were not coming to work in pensions. They were either staying in school (common in a recession) or going to work in insurance. That implied that insurance had improved its average entry salary package to the point where it was not a good value to work much harder for a little more money at a pension house. #2: economics majors were as common as actuarial science majors and slightly more common than math majors. This trend tends to underestimate the intelligence of math majors (in my opinion), thus driving them out of a profession where they could be of immense value. On the other hand, it also underscores the inutility to the actuarial profession of abstract mathematics itself. Few businesses are making so much money at their actuarial functions that they can afford to sponsor theoretical research, so if that is what you like, stay nearer to established sources of funding.

I would recommend that a person interested in actuarial science take the following steps to make herself marketable:

Take the exams. They will improve your prospects dollar for dollar and they will save you time in advancement. [Until 3 years ago, the list ended right here.]

Consider a double major in a social science or in computer science. For whatever reason a math major is not getting the credit she deserves for pure intellect.

Identify firms where you want to work in cities where you want to live. No rule says that you can't take the actuarial exams in a non-actuarial position. Plus, an internal transfer is so much easier than an external job search. Just get your foot in the door.

Understand that the actuarial profession is examining itself at its most basic level right now. Depending on the changes that develop in the next 10 years, this may be an excellent time to start an actuarial career. You could be at the forefront of a transformation of the role of risk analysis in global business and, if so, you will be able to talk intelligently about microeconomics, macroeconomics, finance, trade, risk, and technology.