<p>I'm a junior at a 4-year university, and have been bouncing back and forth as to whether I should major in Finance or Accounting.</p>
<p>1) Which major opens more doors and has a brighter job outlook?
In other words, which one is more of a sure bet for landing a job?
After all, working in a field with a steady job market is extremely important.</p>
<p>2) Which one has more earning potential? Not just in starting salary after undergrad, but
throughout one's career?</p>
<p>If I'd choose Accounting, I think I'd either do corporate accounting or I'd acquire a CPA and be self-employed.
If Finance, I'd probably do corporate finance or investment banking.</p>
<p>Any helpful advice or suggestions is greatly appreciated! Thanks!</p>
<p>There are many conflicting things to consider.
From a career earnings perspective, a managing director at an investment banking firm probably makes more money than a partner in a big 4 accounting firm who in turn makes more than a partner in a local/regional firm. However the chances of making it to the “top of the heap” in either case is something you should also consider.</p>
<p>I worked as a CPA in public practice before becoming the CFO of a publicly traded company. The finance related responsibilities as a CFO (capital raising, mergers and acquisitions and banking relationships) were much more interesting than the accounting stuff, so think about which of these is more appealing to you.</p>
<p>As an aside, I found that either way as you climb the ladder your success becomes less dependent on your technical skills and more on your people skills.</p>
<p>@swdad1: did you start off at a big four or smaller firm? How many years did you work in PA before moving private?</p>
<p>Yo, OP, first off, do what you enjoy in the end, however, I will give you my advice:</p>
<p>First off, what school do you go to? Like it or not, this will be a HUGE factor. If you don’t go to a top Ivy/Stanford/MIT/CalTech/Duke/Stern/a few other top privates or a good state school (basically, good state school to me = Berkeley-Haas, Mich-Ross, Virginia-McIntire, Texas-McCombs and maybe 4-5 others), you probably won’t get into IB/MC. I don’t want to discourage you, but those positions are TOUGH to get. I know people at an EXTREMELY competitive program within Wharton with top-notch GPAs/ECs/etc in a finance/engineering double major that got rejected outright from McKinsey and Goldman. So unless you’re well connected, your high finance dreams are going to be very difficult to obtain from a non-target school.</p>
<p>The good thing about majoring in accounting is that you still have the option to pursue those jobs (i-bankers are basically glorified accountants…true story) and you can get into big 4 actg firms that offer decent exit opps (not MBB corporate exits, but the next best thing). So if I were you, I’d go with accounting since its the most flexible. Plus, for a “corporate finance” position (by that I assume you mean financial analyst at a F500), I’d say accounting is more important than knowing how to model DCFs (which you can learn on your own). In the end though, do what you love.</p>
<p>As a big 8 CPA from back in the day, I would go the accounting route and try to develop an industry expertise in an area that interest you. You gain tremendous skills and an ability to dissect a company very quickly. Public accounting was the most significant experience of my career and essentially made me who I am as a professional. The people I worked with were first class and all very bright and aggressive. It is up or out so you have to be able to rise to another level and handle extreme time constraints. I too rolled out into executive management of a public company and have done fairly well. </p>
<p>Further, with accounting you gain flexibility. I never had too much respect for finance types as I could always cover them technically but had the added skill of being strong with accounting and tax. Just my 2 cents.</p>
<p>I enjoyed the small firm. We didn’t have really big clients so the audit jobs never lasted more than a few weeks so there was a lot of variety in what we did. In my first year, I worked on banks, savings and loans, a manufacturing job, a car dealership and a not for profit. And we all did tax work during tax season. We also had a greater opportunity to work on a variety of things within the audit than we would have been able to at a bigger firm. I had a couple of friends who went with what was then Big 8 firms that spent their entire first year working on cash and test of transactions. On the other hand the formal training they received was much better than I found at the local firm.</p>
<p>I left public to take a mid level position in a start up publically held company and eventually worked my up to CFO and a seat on the board of directors. That company was bought out and a colleague and I cash in our stock options, found some venture capital money, a boat load of debt and started our own company. Spent about 7 years growing it and then sold out to a competitor. I retired a few weeks before my 48th birthday. It was a heck of a ride</p>
<p>Damn, that’s amazing. Congrats man! I guess this is proof that you necessarily have to start at the Big 4 to do well in accounting.</p>
<p>Zub88: I wouldn’t say its over-saturated yet. The economy has simply taken jobs that were once available away. Therefore, people who were once at the bottom end of receiving jobs are now weeded out and things have gotten more competitive. Bottom line: if you are competitive and a good candidate, you’ll be fine in any economy. Don’t lose your edge, realize that you’ll need to do more to stay ahead of the curve and you’ll be golden.</p>
<p>Creamgethamoney, I noticed you didn’t add “don’t” before “necessarily” and wanted to correct you on that.
lol, I just say work hard at whereever you end up and you’ll get somewhere, whatever you do.</p>
<p>Double major is also an option. If you want to become a CPA, you will need additional credits. These can come from additional undergrad work, and at least at most institutions, the finance and accounting curriculum usually follows somewhat closely for the first year or two, so the double major isn’t too bad.</p>