Questions About Switching Into Accounting

College Majors Business Major
1

<p>Hello everyone,</p>

<p>I have a few questions about changing my career to accounting, and I would appreciate any advice you have to give.</p>

<p>I am currently 28 years old, teaching English overseas. I graduated with a degree in Economics from the University of Illinois in 2006, 3.0 or so overall, and have worked some interesting and challenging jobs. I feel I have strong written and computer skills to complement the expected skills of an aspiring accountant, strong math and problem solving. To complete the picture, I have a child on the way with my British wife.</p>

<p>I am considering going back to school for accounting. I would eventually want to earn a CPA. I am drawn to accountancy by the challenge, the consistency of work, the congruence with my inherent strengths, and the versatility. While I would eventually want to make a solid income from it, I do not have ambitions to join the Big 4 and track my billable microseconds - I want to either work in small progressive entrepreneurial companies, have the flexibility to work overseas doing something more challenging than drawing dogs on a whiteboard, or use the knowledge to support the starting my own company. Basically, I see an accounting background as a way to get my foot in the door of any organisation I am interested in working with.</p>

<p>On a side note, I am not interested in taking accounting courses online. I don't study well on the Internet. I would much rather take courses in person.</p>

<p>So, a few questions:</p>

<p>1) What is the fastest and most economical way to get a respectable accounting degree? If I took nothing but 15 credit hours of pure accounting a semester, how long would it take before I had the credits and knowledge to successfully sit for the CPA? 2 years? 1 strenuous one?</p>

<p>2) For that matter, can I sit for the CPA if I have enough credits but have not completed all of the requirements for an accounting degree?</p>

<p>2) Would a British or EU accounting degree be as globally useful as American coursework? Would it provide me the background to sit for an American CPA exam and pass it?</p>

<p>4) And, finally, how internationally portable is Accounting? I'm thinking Asia, New Zealand, South America, etc. Would there be a significant training burden to be able to successfully practice accountancy in another country or region of the world?</p>

<p>Much Appreciated,
Sasha Shepherd</p>

2

<p>You’ll need to complete both the requirements for accounting and the credit hour requirements. Usually (for people who did not do undergrad business) it will take 2 extra years and you will earn a masters in accounting. I have wondered about the international value of a CPA, myself. My dad is a CPA and works for a French company, but in their American headquarters in Houston. I’ll ask him about it, but I was under the impression that it was an American certificate that was not applicable overseas. However, I’d also imagine that having a CPA would significantly ease the training burden no matter where you are, because you would be familiar with the things you would need to do both to practice and adapt.</p>

3

<p>Since you already graduated with a degree, you could go to an accreditted community college and take the required accounting courses there (make sure that with the undergrad degree and accounting classes for the cc you have 150 or more), and then take the CPA.</p>

4

<p>Communicty college does NOT offer the upper accounting courses that required to sit for the CPA exam. So either master of Acct or other non-degree acct. program.</p>

5

<p>zyodei: I’m actually in a similar situation. I have a Bachelor’s in Business Administration and now want to pursue a career in accounting. In my research, I have found that most graduate programs require that you satisfy about 21+ credit hours of prerequisite accounting courses prior to admission into the Master of Accounting program, if you do not have an accounting background. You can satisfy these prerequisite courses usually through an undergraduate certificate program, which is often offered by the school’s division for continuing education. These prerequisite courses go towards the requirements for the CPA exam, so you can take the CPA exam prior to completing your Master’s degree. </p>

<p>Interestingly, I was able to find one university that does not require a background in accounting for its Master’s accounting program (Master of Science in Accountancy at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), which leads me to believe that perhaps there are several more universities that offer them.</p>

6

<p>my community college offers intermediate financial accounting I & II, taxes and decision making, cost accounting, and auditing, and a cpa review course</p>

7

<p>“Communicty college does NOT offer the upper accounting courses that required to sit for the CPA exam. So either master of Acct or other non-degree acct. program.”</p>

<p>Yea, definitely not true. Often times people do not attend a MAcc program and instead opt for a community college to wrap up their credits.</p>

8

<p>In my state, Calif., only lower level accounting are offered in CC.
The community college route is really for all the accounting major/minor/concentration who already fullfill their accounting/business courses requirement, but only need the extra 30 unit which can be anything.</p>

9

<p>PLEASE, PLEASE check with your local state board of accountancy about the requirements for sitting for the CPA. Most states require certain courses outside of 24 credits of accounting. Example of other courses would be: a course in ethics, one year of economics, a course in managment and marketing, one year of business law etc. You REALLY need to check out these requirements.</p>

10

<p>FINALLY someone who wants to major in Accounting because they find it awesome and fits their characteristics.</p>

11

<p>You would probably need to have a lot of accounting courses before being accepted to a masters of accounting program. Here are the ones required by Indiana University for their MSA. Not as many upper-level accounting classes are required to enter the MSA program as to get the undergrad BS, but still a lot of classes, including, for IU’s pre-reqs for the MSA anyway, one class each in finance, information systems, and business law. The shortest calendar time you could do the pre-requisites on campus would be two six week summer sessions, and then two regular semesters–one calendar year-- because of pre-requisites. Then one year to complete the MSA. But they also offer online versions of some of the pre-requisites, including upper ones like cost accounting and auditing. You could take the intro accounting classes and probably business law at a cc or somewhere else, as long as IU would accept that school’s particular classes as being qualified. </p>

<p>MSA pre-requisites: </p>

<pre><code>* Financial Accounting I and II [BUS-A201 intro financial acct and BUS-A311 intermediate acct 1]

  • Managerial Accounting [BUS-A202 intro managerial acct and BUS-A325 cost accounting]
  • Auditing [BUS-A424]
  • Tax [BUS-A329]
  • Finance [BUS-F300 or BUS-F370]
  • Business Law [BUS-L201]
  • Business Information Systems [BUS-K201]
    </code></pre>

<p>[Prerequisites:</a> Master of Science in Accounting: Graduate Accounting Programs: Kelley School of Business: Indiana University Bloomington](<a href=“http://kelley.iu.edu/gap/msa/prerequisites.cfm]Prerequisites:”>http://kelley.iu.edu/gap/msa/prerequisites.cfm)</p>