Could I make it as an accountant?

College Majors Business Major
1

Hello,

I am a junior in high school right now, taking 4 AP classes (language, us history, physics, envo science) and the rest pre-ap classes (including precal, which i consider to be harder than most of the ap classes im taking!). I have all A’s and am not taking any regular classes.

I heard that accounting is logic based. I am very interested in the field but I’m afraid I don’t have the most logical brain…I’m talking about like daily life logic stuff, or scientific reasoning, or logic in physics. I have a lot of people logic, as i can understand why people do the things they do or can predict what they want to do, but other than that, not a lot. I understand the logic reasoning in my language class as we have to analyze logical arguments, but in precal, especially word problems, i have no idea! In physics, I have given up on trying to understand the concept, i just memorize it and move on, which i dont want to do with accounting.

I know I will struggle in accounting, but how hard? I have a good work ethic i believe, in precal if we have a test and i DO NOT understand it, i teach myself the whole entire thing and strive to understand why this is the answer and not that. In physics, i do the same thing, and i study for hours at a time. Would my work ethic would be good enough, even though I’m not that logically based? i do not want to suffer in my career, especially.

2

No need to decide now and nobody here can predict if it will be a good field for you. Having a strong work ethic is extremely valuable in accounting as it will be in most other fields you may want to go into. If you start in any business undergraduate program you will take a number of core courses in disciplines such as accounting, finance, management, IT etc. and you will have ample opportunity to see where your interests and aptitudes lie before declaring a major at the end of your sophomore year of college.

3

Within Accounting, there is audit and tax and each of those is somewhat different too. As someone who does a great deal of hiring in this field, academic success, communication skills, and ability to work on a team are the three most important attributes that I look for in candidates. On the tax side, it’s not all logic. Some of it is learning tax law and some of it is problem solving. If you are in HS and excelling with your AP work, that’s a good indicator that you have the ability to do the work. I write this as a tax professional and not an audit professional.