I don’t know how many people here know about this area, but I’ll ask anyway.
I’m still very young, and I recently finished my bachelor’s at Cornell recently. Unfortunately, I literally had little to no clue about getting a job as a student, and purely followed my academic interests. It hasn’t gotten me anywhere, and I’m still trying to get a decent job to this day. Internships with any financial work or entity is nonexistent; nothing but clerical work really. I am networking pretty hard right now, but it does have its difficulty for reasons I won’t get into here.
My interests stem from mathematics, so I did a bit more of that in school, but unfortunately also a few too many needless economics courses. I did one class each in accounting and finance, and although I appreciate some aspects of finance, I have no interest in some of the job types, or could not see myself working some of obscene hours for those jobs on a regular basis.
Accounting, however, did peak my interest a bit more, but I seriously lack the knowledge and credits in it for any kind of related job at this time. I’m seriously considering attending school again to help myself move forward with actually starting a career in international-based accounting because of its potential flexibility. What would be the best way to get the accounting credits that I would need to make this happen? What schools would offer the best opportunities and networks for getting into that kind of career, or accounting in general?
I don’t know too much about international accounting specifically, but one of the things about an accounting degree is that’s very flexible and not particularly prestige-oriented. You don’t really need to go to a school in the same caliber as Cornell (in terms of fame and prestige) in order to succeed at even the most prestigious firms in the public accounting field. You could easily do it by choosing a school from [this list](Accounting Degrees | AccountingCoach) that is affordable or appealing to you and making sure that their undergraduate course conforms to the licensing requirements for your state’s board of accountacy. Most will, especially if AACSB-accredited.
If public accounting is something that appeals to you, your main goal will be to take and pass and the CPA exam. Most states require 150 credit hours (total, not just in accounting) and many have specific requirements such as 24 credit hours of accounting. The fact that you already have a bachelor’s degree will help you a lot with that (it doesn’t matter what it’s in). Assuming your current degree program is roughly 120 credit hours, you would really only need 27-30 more hours (possibly even less since your previous accounting and finance class may help depending on what they are).
The upside of public accounting is that, depending on what you’re interested in, you could have work opportunities outside of the country. All of the Big Four as well as the next largest firms have operations (offices, affiliates, and clients) across the country as well as all over world.
That sounds like a great idea. I already knew about the 150 credit requirement, and I have 120 of them, but only 3 in accounting. I have no issue making that up, and I’m going to do a bit more research into a school. International accounting, from what I’ve read, incorporates some knowledge about exchange rates, IFRS standards, and countries’ business environments.
Many good schools have some courses on IFRS, but some don’t bother having separate classes because IFRS is substantially similar to U.S. GAAP (which means that once you learn GAAP figuring out IFRS will usually be learning which rules are different – such as IFRS not disallowing LIFO, IFRS rules on component depreciation, etc.) In addition to any college coursework, pretty much any of the bigger public accounting firms will sponsor continuing education for you once you start working and that can be a good place to study IFRS and foreign business concepts if you don’t get enough of that when pursuing your accounting degree.
Are you interested in getting a second undergraduate degree in accounting, or do you think you might be interested in pursuing a Master’s degree? If the latter, you could potentially have even more options since there are many schools that have M.Acc or MSA programs with concentrations in international business.
I’m not really interested in getting another undergraduate degree, but rather getting the accounting course load. A master’s would seem like the right idea if I’m eligible for it. The goal would be to get professional experience and networks during schooling ideally.