If you have an old creaky uneven floor with no insulation, it makes pretty much zero difference what you put on it - carpet and padding may be best at that point if noise dampening is your biggest concern. 

Keep learning, keep questioning, keep grinding.  

If you really are passionate get a second job and grind it out for a couple years.

However I can relate to wanting to speed things up working in the engineering grind.. haha. 

Ceramic tile is no good for 2nd floor units because when tenants move a chair during the night the noise bothers the tenants below.Strangely, every home I owned in Las Vegas had ceramic tile in kitchens and when I cleaned the tile almost every house has zero chips and zero cracks.

You obviously have an axe to grind with life insurance.

If you have the chain of documents that support your story, you may want to make some noise in the law enforcement direction.

Meanwhile the back-ground noise in the call center drowned out the conversation so much that I could not hear the person I was speaking with and could barely hear my own thoughts.

Also renters are more tolerant of the noise and pollution because they're not making a huge long term commitment in renting the place.

We just replaced a garbage disposal in a rental property after the current tenant called to tell us it was making a grinding sound.