<p>Granted, I have only taken intro fin/managerial (I hear intermediate financial is really tough), I'm wondering if accounting is a bit overrated in terms of its difficulty. The only thing that's challenging about it is that there's A LOT to memorize and a new language to learn. In a way, its similar to biology in terms of the skill set necessary to survive in it. Isn't finance more challenging, since it has a lot of math/problem solving involved in it? I'm just wondering, and perhaps I'm being too cocky since I haven't taken intermediate yet, but even in intermediate, I hear that its just more in-depth (i.e. more memorization of journal entries or techniques/language to learn) which makes it challenging. Memorization, while difficult, simply takes a lot of hard work and practice to overcome, but it isn't difficult per say. Finally, is finance really so easy at most schools? What are the difficult classes in finance?</p>
<p>I agree that sometimes it may be overstated. However, I think that like learning a language, either you get it or you don’t. From my experience there doesn’t seem to be much middle ground, which may be why it is overstated. Intermediate is a lot more in depth, and if you plan on memorizing journal entries, you will get frustrated fast. You really need to understand the core concepts and know how to create a journal entries off the top of your head given the circumstances. If you can really get an understanding of A = L + E and the way that information flows through the financial statements, then you will be fine.</p>
<p>I agree it’s overrated, but finance is easier at most schools.</p>
<p>Memorizing journal entries is a bad idea…assuming you mean memorizing all parts(all debits and credits that go together for a transaction). If you are recording a capitalized lease you obviously are going to need some kind of gross lease receivable or liability or something depending on which side of the lease you are on. But for the rest of it you need to be able to create on your own based on your understanding of what’s really happening, not memorization. In other words, if I come up with some type of transaction you’ve never seen you should be able to work out a journal entry based on what you know. </p>
<p>It’s not hard if you “get it”. It’s not impossible if you just memorize depending on how tough your professor is and how good you are at memorizing things…but if you get through intermediate I by memorizing entries and have a hard time with other things(dollar value lifo or whatever) you should switch majors IMO.</p>
<p>It’s a lot more than just memorization.</p>
<p>It’s not that it’s necessarily the most difficult, it’s that you need to have a strong GPA. Graduating without a strong GPA is almost like not graduating at all.</p>
<p>the difficulty is definitely overstated, but the absolute boredom of completing financial statements is underrated. i dont understand how dentists have a higher suicide rate than accountants. </p>
<p>i took accounting in HS and financial acct last year and easily got the highest grades, but now i’m taking managerial and completely forgot everything about financial acct. it really is about memorization and nothing more</p>
<p>Ignore what the above poster said. The intro to accounting classes are not relevant.</p>
<p>First, you don’t need to memorize journal entries. I graduated with about a 3.7 in accounting and NEVER memorized one journal entry. You just really need to understand the accounting equation and have an understanding for the cash flow. </p>
<p>I was a physics minor and found that accounting is somewhat akin to physics, although much less sophisticated. However, the mindset is similar. If you get it, it comes easily. If you don’t, it can be a very hard subject. Also, there isn’t a lot of memorization other than knowing some formula and being able to apply these formulas to a variety of practical problems, especially for the intro courses in accounting. Upper level accounting courses do require more memorization of concepts although not necessarily journal entries.</p>
<p>The second reason accounting can be hard is that at some level it is akin to to studying law. In fact, tax is tax law. This means that there is a wealth of information that you need to know and understand and apply to practical problems. Again, if you have the mindset for accounting, much of the legal type of information can be deduced from common sense,with the exception of tax courses. Tax isn’t common sense based anymore. It is all about compromises with the various political parties and factions in congress. Tax does require a lot of memorization and understanding.</p>
<p>All I can tell you is that for most folks that I have known or met in business programs, accounting tends to be the hardest course for them.</p>
<p>The strongest skills you can have when studying accounting is a lot of patience, a high work ethic and an analytical mind. The first two are self-explanatory but the third is not. As explained earlier, accounting really is a language. You need to learn its rules and abide by them. There is no room (especially on the intro level) to be creative and come up with new ways of doing something…two things that many business majors do very well. Accounting does requires you to ask “so what?” You need to constantly reanalyze how everything fits together. You need to be able to see how a change here will affect something there. That’s where analytical thought processes become essential.</p>
<p>The main reason I think most business majors have trouble with accounting is that they don’t put in the effort to learn its rules. The second reason is that they become impatient with those rules and try to improve them (a self-defeating effort).</p>
<p>Some things you need to memorize but not how to journalize entire transactions. It helps to understand the why’s but when it comes down to it, if you decide a lease is a capital lease because the present value of the lease payments is greater than 75% of the FMV or that another is an operating lease because the lease term is less than 90% of the economic life, that’s wrong. You also are best off remembering the names of certain accounts you might use in certain circumstances(for example if you are dealing with a project where revenue is collected according to percentage completed and billing takes place intermittently). If you don’t remember you need a “Billings on Contract” or whatever account to debit or credit you are going to have a harder time than you need to have. You should memorize certain things and then use your reasoning to figure out what to do with them. Once you know a few things you can figure the rest out.</p>
<p>The people who are saying that they didn’t memorize a single journal entry are greatly exaggerating. Sure, the intro accounting classes do not require much memorization once you figure out how it all works. But the journal entries you learn in advanced accounting classes are not something you can pull off the top of your head.</p>
<p>That is all.</p>
<p>Wait, hold on. How do you guys not memorize journal entries? I don’t see how you can do well without memorizing them to some extent. I can understand the importance of seeing why the entries are being executed the way they are, but you still have to know what account is being debited/credited/etc.</p>
<p>t14hopeful asks,How do you guys not memorize journal entries?"</p>
<p>Response: When I noted that I didn’t have to generally memorize journal entries, I was primarily referring to the first year of intro accounting.</p>
<p>However, even for upper class years, I generally didn’t have to memorize many journal entries. It just came to me as to what the appropriate entry would be. Even to this day, I can tell our bookkeeper/accountant how to journalize any entry. Maybe I just had a better memory than my classmates and didn’t have to resort to memorizing entries since it came naturally after I saw it. I think that you just need to REALLY and fundamentally understand the accounting equation. I instinctively understood what items appeared in financial statements and income statements , and how increases/ decreases in each component of the financial statements affected other statements. </p>
<p>As I said, the mindset of accounting is similar to that of Physics. There are physics students who can look at an equation and answer any question regarding it no matter how tough the question. I would assume the same can be said for some engineering topics. Some folks just have this ability.</p>
<p>T14, memorizing a dozen common journal entries takes 1 hour. That’s not what accounting is all about.</p>
<p>To reiterate what sp1212 said…consider a scenario along these lines:</p>
<p>Company A uses the percentage of completion method.</p>
<p>-This means that the company recognizes revenue as it finishes a project, not when it signs a contract(totally wrong) or when it finishes/delivers the project(not ideal method in most cases). This means there’s got to be some kind of profit recognized along the way. How to calculate that is the accountant’s responsibility. Same with recognizing a loss if cost estimates get out of control. Figuring out the entries isn’t hard because you’ll know enough(either given in the problem if it’s a class or provided by coworkers in reality). </p>
<p>You’ll know when to debit and credit cash because you’ll know when money changes hands. You’ll know when to debit or credit A/R as well as Billings on Contract(this would be an account you have to actually know, you can’t just make it up as if you are a FASB unto yourself). You’ll know based on the costs your given how to debit WiP and what goes into it. And so on and so forth. If you know enough basic accounts that almost always show up(Cash, A/R/ A/P, WiP, Sales, Cost of Goods Sold, etc etc etc) you can usually figure out the entire entry.</p>
<p>taxguy is a genius.</p>
<p>Accounting isn’t theoretical physics or something esoteric like that. However, it takes a good amount of practice and hard work, especially if you want to get an A. </p>
<p>Honestly, I’ve found that in college, no class is so difficult that its just impossible to understand unless its a hard science/engineering. But getting an A in any class, even general ed classes, takes a lot of dedication, and I think that this is something a lot of people lack since most people are fine with a B. In my opinion, if you want a 4.0, you have to really know your **** since there is such little margin for error in almost any class.</p>
<p>If you are not good at arithmetic, it will be hard. </p>
<p>In the States it appears to me that accounting is a profession reserved for smarter people due to the entry barriers. </p>
<p>However, in Asia, accounting is seen as a pretty middling profession, because most everyone receives a rigorous mathematical training in primary and secondary school so accounting doesn’t present itself as a difficult subject to most folks, whereas in the the US, where math education stinks, only a few people actually have the proper training to tackle accounting. </p>
<p>Personally, in my accounting classes (#1 in accounting), 20% of students did well and didn’t think accounting was a big deal, and 80% thought it was the hardest damn thing on earth. These are people who graduated in the top 3% of their high school classes who were complaining. </p>
<p>I didn’t think it was very hard at all. I thought accounting problem sets and tests were quite fun and entertaining. I was in the minority though.</p>
<p>navyarf notes,"Personally, in my accounting classes (#1 in accounting), 20% of students did well and didn’t think accounting was a big deal, and 80% thought it was the hardest damn thing on earth. These are people who graduated in the top 3% of their high school classes who were complaining. "</p>
<p>Response: As I have said all along, if you have the mindset for accounting, it comes fairly easily. However, if you don’t, it can be deemed a very hard course.</p>