UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Six graduating seniors in the Penn State Smeal College of Business class of 2017 each passed five of the necessary exams toward their actuarial science accreditation — a rare distinction, according to Ron Gebhardtsbauer, clinical associate professor of actuarial science and head of Smeal’s Actuarial Science Program.
Michael Eccker, Ji Hoon Kim, Linglong Yan, Stephen Rakoczy, Evan Su and Jiawei "Vincent" Yang all passed the first five actuarial exams before graduating.
“This is very unusual. A typical actuarial student passes two or three exams by graduation, which is quite an accomplishment in itself. Getting four or five exams means they will get multiple job offers — really good ones — or go to a great grad school,” Gebhardtsbauer said, noting that Yan will be attending Carnegie Mellon and enrolling in its master's program in computational finance.
“This is a recent phenomenon," he added. "It was just four years ago when we had our first two actuarial students pass five exams of the Society of Actuaries before graduating. This school year, we tripled that!”
In addition, four students — Tarek Kerbag, Cathy Wang, Zekun Zhang and John Miller — each passed four actuarial exams. Miller, a junior Schreyer Scholar, is a triple major and president of the Actuarial Science Club.