I’m majoring in Business Administration in Accounting and I was wondering what are good schools. I want a school that has a good pass rate for the CPA exam. I’m going to be a transfer and I’ve looked at schools but I am still a little confused on my list of schools; I only know for sure SDSU. I want to stay in the Cali area and finish with a GPA of 3.8 and want cost less than $50,000 a year.
Cal Poly SLO, CSU Fullerton, San Jose State, UC Riverside and UC Irvine would all be good options.
My $.02 as a 25+ year CPA (SDSU accounting undergrad & USC masters in taxation):
I don’t think CPA exam pass rate isn’t really a function of where you go to school. You pretty much are taking the same courses wherever you go. I would expect pass rates to look better as the schools get more selective. But I am certain the same student who did well coming out of UCSB could have done equally after attending CSUN or Cal State East Bay.
On the job side, you will see some “regional bias” in the hiring process for some CSU schools. SJSU grads probably get hired more easily into the Bay Area than CSU Fullerton grads. The exact opposite is probably true for OC jobs.
So if you know for sure where you want to live and work upon graduation, you may want to consider that as well. Cal Poly & UCSB accounting grads get recruited into both So Cal & No Cal firms.
Lastly, if you want to work in San Diego, then you can’t go wrong with SDSU.
Good luck!