My experience from the mid 2000s in NYC was that almost all prospective actuaries I met were not actuary majors, but rather math/physics/engineering with a decent amount of others. The first few exams are pretty easy if you are half decent at math. However, I have never heard of a person with an actuary degree being hired by a quant firm. Back then, you either needed to come out of a top tier school or have a hard science degree and some projects showing proficiency in programming, at the bachelor level, and a Masters or PhD preferred for higher level.
Actually, I remember there being a specific effort by the SOA to create a credential that would signal to the finance community that actuaries possessed and were capable of the skills the quant and other finance firms were looking for, since becoming a trader was very in vogue in the mid 2000s. However, I just don't think that SOA had a selective enough filter for their credential, and it was pretty lacking in programming skills.
I assume that if the group of candidates who are smart and disciplined enough to grind through all the SOA/CAS exams would do similarly well grinding through leetcode and programming and have a decent chance landing a job at a FAANG or similar. My perception of an actuarial bachelor's degree is that it's a degree that helps people get through the preliminary actuarial exams, but not exactly difficult compared to any math/physics/statistics/comp sci/engineering degree. That is where my conclusion of having a broader based degree would be more beneficial. Maybe things have changed, back in mid 2000s, I was under the impression employers preferred people with a couple exams, but they valued experience more than just coming out of college having passed 4 exams compared to everyone else's 2 exams.
I think it takes most fellows of SOA/CAS years to pass all the exams. The quickest I ever read about many years ago was someone that did them all in 3 or 4 years, but I am not sure we are talking about the same thing since it definitely was not possible to take all the exams in one year (there were at least 4 to become an associate actuary, and then at least 4 more to become a fellow, given roughly every 6 months). I do not know what you mean by the PE acronym here.
Are you a fellow of the SOA/CAS? If so, that's very impressive to be both a pharmacist and a fellow. I can understand a PharmD having a worse ROI than using the same time and effort to become a fellow. But I would need more convincing to believe a bachelors in actuarial science is worth much more than a broader hard science/engineering bachelors. At least 15 years ago it was definitely seen as pigeonholing yourself for no reason assuming you had the capacity to self study for the first few exams.
