德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校

The Department of Mathematics offers a Master's of Arts (M.A.) degree in Mathematics (Actuarial Focus). Our actuarial M.A. program is essentially a professional program dedicated to providing the academic preparation for entry-level actuarial employment in the United States. Our graduate program is funded by the State of Texas and strongly supported financially by actuarial employers throughout the United States, who hope to recruit qualified graduates of the program. Although our actuarial graduate program is small (usually two to four new students are admitted with financial support as teaching assistants each fall and sometimes a few other applicants are admitted without financial support), the actuarial mathematics classes typically have 40 students per class, since they meet with their corresponding upper division undergraduate classes (but with additional questions on examinations, required class presentations, different grading standards and/or additional course responsibilities determined by the instructor of record). It is our expectation that our M.A. students supported as teaching assistants be top performing and effective teaching assistants.

Students successful in our graduate program earn a masters degree while taking classes that cover the learning objectives for all of the preliminary examinations of the major North American actuarial organizations. Alternatively, graduate students can take actuarial classes while pursuing a graduate degree not specifically emphasizing actuarial studies. The majority of such students have sought a Masters of Science degree in Statistics, using actuarial studies as their formal minor. Occasionally, some mathematics Ph.D. candidates decide to pursue more business-related opportunities and fulfill our M.A. requirements. Our M.A. program requires 33 credit hours and is designed to take 4 semesters. Our M.A. degree in Mathematics (Actuarial Focus) is a terminal degree.

The M.A. in Mathematics requires at least 30 semester-credit-hours (103-credit courses) of coursework, plus either a Report for 3 hours or an additional Mathematics class for 3 hours. For the Actuarial Studies focus, the report must be on an actuarial project (usually a write-up of a work or study project rather than original research) approved by the director of actuarial studies.

The coursework must be as specified in the four points below; at most nine hours can be undergraduate (upper-division) hours, with no more than six of those nine in a single subject.