Come October, it's hard for an aspiring actuary to think about anything other than exams. Between wrapping up CAS Online Course 2, preparing for Exam 6, and gearing up for my new role as part of the CAS Examination Committee, my brain is constantly preoccupied with exams and exam-related issues. This is to say: I hope you'll forgive yet another post about exams this month. I promise to move on to more substantive matters soon.
In the past, my focus has only been on how to approach/survive the exam process as it stands. Now I'm also contemplating how to improve it. Every system contains inequities. Some are hidden, some are obvious, some are intended, and some are accidental. The actuarial exam process is certainly no exception. The very idea of a timed test favors candidates with specific skills not necessarily related to actuarial ability. I'm sure every candidate can come up with an example of how "unfair" the system is.
I am no exception. My personal objection, not only to the exam process, but American culture in general, is that it encourages a warped perspective on sleep. Americans not only don't sleep enough, we don't even sleep when and how we should*. The end result for society overall is lowered productivity [1], eroding health [2], possibly Alzheimer's [3], and increased mortality [4]. Within the more limited context of actuarial exams, it means significant advantages for people with certain sleep patterns, i.e. "morning people."
"Partial sleep deprivation" refers to the state of getting some, but not all, of your required sleep in a particular night. The negative effects of even one night of partial sleep deprivation are measurable and well documented for both cognitive and motor tasks [5]. Prolonged or chronic partial sleep deprivation has even more severe consequences as "sleep debt" accumulates, however this is a long-term habitual issue and not directly related to inequities caused by testing procedures.
Say you're sitting for an upper-level actuarial exam. The exams require candidates to arrive at the testing site no later than 8am on the day of the test. For me, given that I have to travel to the exam site, spend an hour reviewing notes and mentally preparing, and want to give myself a little extra time just in case something goes horribly wrong, like I go to the wrong exam site or something (as I once did), I need to be up no later than 6am on exam day. If you typically wake up much later than this, say 7am or 8am, then you are partially sleep-deprived while sitting for a 4 hour exam with a 30-40% pass rate. Needless to say, this is not to your advantage.
Based on my (admittedly brief) survey of the literature, it seems reasonable to project that candidates who have to wake up 1 to 3 hours earlier than their regular time on exam day suffer decreased performance to a degree that often makes the difference between passing and failing. The "freshness" that comes from adequate sleep improves learning [6], fact retrieval [7], the ability to abstract and conceptualize [8], and even insight [9]. In one test of factual learning, subjects who took just a one-hour nap before being tested on word pairs they had memorized earlier scored 15% better than their counterparts who had no nap [10].
While I don't think the early exam times cost late-sleepers such as myself 15% on every exam, it certainly costs us something. Exactly quantifying how often that "something" is the difference between passing and failing is beyond my expertise. However one could take a queue from the movement to delay start times in public schools and the improved test scores that resulted [11]. Shifting school start times even by just an hour makes a significant difference, in large part because adolescent brains are wired to wake up later, regardless of enforced habits like school start times [12]. I’m not aware of specific data on the ages of exam takers, but assuming that most of us start taking exams around age 20 and continue until age 25-30, we are generally past the peak of this chemical influence. However the need for sleep declines with age, so young adults would still require more than the average working person.
Part of the inflexibility surrounding sleep in our culture comes from the mistaken view that the need for sleep or sleep habits are a matter of choice or dedication. Yes, many things are within a person's control, but not everything. At least given the current level of our understanding, your sleep needs and patterns mostly are what they are; the best thing you can do for your health and performance is to go with your natural needs. It's hard to stand up and say this in our anti-sleep world, but if more people do, over time we can change the culture. I’ll be the first to say it: I don’t function as well when I wake up before 8am, I do my best work from 9pm to midnight, and I need more than 7 hours of sleep per night. I am a "night person" and that's just how it is.
Luckily, the evolving actuarial exam process is already moving in a direction that addresses the “morning person” versus "night person" issue. The multiple choice exams now being offered at computer-based testing facilities allow candidates to select not only different days, but different times to sit. Having this choice levels the playing field between candidates with varying sleep needs and habits. I encourage those sitting for such exams to take full advantage. Figure out when you test best and schedule accordingly. And of course, get plenty of sleep! It may not feel like an hour of sleep is worth more than an hour of studying, but it is**.
For those of us subject to the more rigid structure of the upper exams, unless you’re going to permanently alter your sleep habits to suit the two days a year that you sit for exams, there isn’t much you can do. The negative effects of losing those 1 to 3 hours can be partially offset by stimulants such as caffeine. However such stimulants can only replace sleep for about an hour before performance deteriorates [13]. The best thing to do is eradicate your sleep debt before the exam (before even studying for the exam, if you can) so you can better tolerate one day of sub-optimal sleep.
I’m off to take my own advice now. Good night and good luck with all your exams!
*For a thorough, and very concerning, assessment of the importance of sleep and how to get it, check out Pascal's Pensees: http://pensees.pascallisch.net/?p=1116
**In fact your brain is quite good at deluding itself when it comes to your need for sleep. 24 hours without sleep is the equivalent of being legally too drunk to drive, and it's been demonstrated that at 19 hours without sleep (when your head feels like it's filled with sand), that's actually happening because large chunks of your neurons are turning off like they do when you're asleep. You don't know this is happening and you can't stop it. [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v472/n7344/full/nature10009.html]
Endnotes:
[1] "Sleep deprivation and its effects on cognitive performance," by Jillian Dorrian and David F. Dinges, Wiley-Liss 2006
[2] For example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20371664
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19779148
[4] http://www.journalsleep.org/viewabstract.aspx?pid=27780
[5] http://www.med.upenn.edu/uep/user_documents/DurmerandDinges--NeurocognitiveConsequences--SEM.NEUROL.2005.pdf and http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1997-07865-006
[6] http://www.sfn.org/index.aspx?pagename=brainbriefings_sleepandlearning
[7] (and [10]) Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, vol 86, p 241
[8] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6958/abs/nature01951.html?lang=en
[9] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14737168
[10] Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, vol 86, p 241
[11] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sleepless-in-america/201102/do-later-school-start-times-really-help-high-school-students
[12] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sleepless-in-america/200904/sleep-and-teenagers
[13] http://www.jneurosci.org/content/22/13/5581.short
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