Prepare for Exam FM and Exam P with Capstone Exams. These coach-curated, single-attempt practice exams are designed to mirror the real exam experience and help you assess your readiness before exam day.
When you’re in the final stretch before exam day, one question tends to rise above the rest: “What will the exam really feel like?” To help you answer that question, we’re rolling out new Capstone Exams for Exam FM (Financial Mathematics) and Exam P (Probability).
Below, you can learn more about the new Capstone Exams—and what makes them special.
What are Capstone Exams?
Capstone Exams are static, coach-curated practice exams designed to closely replicate the real exam experience. From the wording of each question to the overall level of difficulty, every detail is intentional. While dynamic Adapt® and custom exams are essential for building proficiency, Capstone Exams play a different role.
Two Capstone Exams are now available for the Exam FM and Exam P courses. When you’re within 2 weeks of your exam date, you’ll find your Capstone Exams near the top of your Practice dashboard:
What makes Capstone Exams different?
Capstone Exams are distinct in the following ways:
- Single-attempt format: Each Capstone Exam can only be taken once, with review available afterward. We made this choice to preserve the integrity and meaning of your results.
- Static and identical exams: Each Capstone Exam is the same for all students, allowing you to compare your performance with other aspiring actuaries. See how you stack up both overall and question by question.
- Separate from the regular question bank: Capstone Exam questions closely mirror the SOA sample and Coaching Actuaries questions, while remaining entirely separate from the existing question bank. This ensures a fresh, realistic practice experience.
- Coach-curated experience: Every question on each Capstone Exam is deliberately hand-selected by our coaches to match the wording, structure, and difficulty of the real exam.
In short, Capstone Exams serve as your final checkpoint before exam day.
How to take a Capstone Exam
Before you take a Capstone Exam, we ask you to acknowledge the following statement:
“I understand that this exam can only be taken once. Additionally, I will do my best to create an environment as close to exam conditions as I'm able in order to best assess my proficiency leading up to the real exam.”
To get the most value from a Capstone Exam, you should treat it like the real thing. That means taking the exam in a quiet space, without notes or distractions, and allowing the timer to run continuously, even during breaks.
The closer your environment matches real exam conditions, the more meaningful your results will be. That mindset is what turns a practice exam into a powerful diagnostic tool rather than just another study session.
What to do after you complete a Capstone Exam
After completing a Capstone Exam, we recommend approaching the review process the same way you would after an Adapt or custom exam:
- Review the solutions carefully.
- Identify weak or uncertain topics.
- Refresh key concepts and clarify misunderstandings.
Because Capstone Exams are identical for all students, they also provide valuable peer comparison context, helping you better understand how your performance compares with other Coaching Actuaries students.
Once you’ve completed both Capstone Exams, continue practicing and reinforcing your skills using Adapt or custom exams. Capstone Exams are designed to complement—not replace—your ongoing practice and review in the final days before exam day.
A few important caveats to keep in mind
While Capstone Exams are designed to closely mirror the real Exam FM and Exam P experience, it’s important to understand a few inherent limitations.
The real FM and P exams are administered via computer-based testing (CBT), where each candidate’s exam is randomly generated from a large pool of questions according to predefined parameters, such as syllabus topic weights. As a result, no two actual exams are identical, and individual exam experiences can vary.
With this in mind, our coaches aim for the Capstone Exams to be comparable, on average, to the overall difficulty and syllabus weighting of the real exam, based on the syllabus and the SOA’s sample questions.
However, just like the real exam, an individual Capstone Exam may feel slightly easier or harder than another candidate’s actual exam due to the inherent randomness introduced by CBT exams.
By using a fixed, carefully curated set of questions, Capstone Exams provide a consistent, intentional exam experience that offers additional insights into where you stand heading into exam day. We encourage you to give them a try. And once you do, let us know what you think. Your feedback helps us continue refining our tools!