<p>I'm going to be a senior next year in high school, and this summer I got accepted to the intro to accounting class at a community college. I'm planning to major in accounting or the business area. So should I take the accounting class or drop it for something else like psychology. Is it important to take the accounting class at a four year university? Advice please?</p>
<p>Well, you could take it, but you would have plenty of time to finish your accounting courses during your undergrad. You should take care of your GE.</p>
<p>I agree with AsTran that you should take care of your GE. Furthermore, I would say you should not take the intro acct now. Most likely, you are not allowed to take upper acct course in your first year in college even you’ve done with your intro acct in CC while still in HS. By the time you take your intermediate acct, you might forget all the materials you’ve learned two years ago. Take something in GE that’s not in your major and not a pre-req of a series while in college.</p>
<p>Agree with others ^^ that you should take your first accounting course at your college. </p>
<p>I teach financial accounting at a SUNY and a one credit course for some transfer students. </p>
<p>Most of the transfer students I teach have an inferior knowledge of the material. </p>
<p>In other words, take the psychology course.
If you want to be an accounting major and want to take the CPA exam, take all of your courses at your college.</p>
<p>It is not important to take intro to accounting at a 4 year university. It doesnt matter really, it up to you</p>
<p>However, you probably don’t want to take it until at least your sophmore year, because, like others have said, youll probably forget the materisal. There is no reason to take it before you even graduate high school, unless you really want to see what its like, and even then, you should probably re-take it later.</p>
<p>Transfer students from my CC had a Better understanding of the material than those who took it at my state school. My community college classes acctg classes had MUCH smaller class sizes, great teachers w/ lots of office hours, and spread out the intro class to two classes, instead of my state school’s one class. ALot of times 4 Year university’s will have Grad Students teach the class, and the class size is 200+ as opposed to <35 at CC. So if you can take it at CC during your sophmore year, I say do it.</p>
<p>Sort of agree…the negative was I took financial and managerial accounting 4 and 3 semesters before I got to my university. In the end, the classes were much smaller. I had 6 kids in my class for financial. Also, my classes were four hour credits with a lab time for some reason. My gf was at the university I’m at now, I could still keep up with her material. All that being said, I would take something else. Something easier to get adjusted to college classes and what not…</p>
<p>If you want to do accounting or finance as your major, I wouldn’t recommend taking the intro class at a CC because your basic understanding of the material will be less than it would have been had you taken that course at your University. Poor fundamentals in accounting will make upper level finance and accounting classes much harder.</p>
<p>^^^^Not true, imo. If anything, you’ll get a better foundation at CC. </p>
<p>People just don’t want to believe that the quality of the teaching at CC is better than what theyre getting at their schools that theyre paying 10x more for. But for me, it was better. Id imagine that the quality of the teaching would at least be comparable, if not better (like it was for me) at most CCs. </p>
<p>You dont need a phd to effectively teach intro to acctg courses. You don’t need a teacher whose fantastic at research to effectively teach intro courses. Large class sizes are detrimental to learning at topic such as acctg.</p>
<p>accounting firms would want you to take it at a 4 year university</p>
<p>^ No, they could care less where you take your intro courses. </p>
<p>Although, it does effect recruiting in the fact that your GPA from the school you eventally transfer to will not include the 4.0s you received from the easier intro, and general ed courses that you took at CC; meanwhile your competition will have their easier gen ed grades included in their gpas.</p>
<p>I was told by a big 4 recruiter who came to UT Austin that they care very much.</p>
<p>I was told by a big4 recruiter and a Grant Thorton recruiter that they don’t care. </p>
<p>Besides, why would they care? They hire lots of transfer students. And as long as you get good grades in the intro and upper lvl accctg courses, it doesnt matter. Also, they are INTRO courses. Plenty of ppl get hired who did terrible in their intro acctg courses and then did great in their intermediate and upper lvl courses. Doesn’t make any sense that recruiters “care very much.” </p>
<p>Maybe your recruiters were talking about taking intermediate & advanced acctg courses at CC?</p>
<p>I have asked DTT, Pwc, Ernst & Young, and KPMG. They all said the same thing. No CC.</p>
<p>Father and CPA here. In my 30 years in the business I have never heard of anyone caring if you took your ACC 101 class at a CC if graduate from a good 4 year program. Anywhere I have worked expected you to take your Intermediate and Advanced Accounting, Auditing, Taxes and Business Law at school that will issue your degree. If you do well in the upper level classes, where you took the intro classes is moot.</p>
<p>I would also say that if you take accounting at a CC and plan to major in accounting, your university may make you retake intro accounting. Michigan does that for accounting and operations (though I think now you can test out of it, but its a hard test).</p>
<p>I think ilovetexas is not telling the truth. See how his/her one recruiter multiplied in his/her subsequent post?</p>
<p>I could never see a recruiter saying that about your intro to acctg courses and in no way, would the fact that one student took intro to acctg at cc cause the recruiter to pass. Ridiculous. </p>
<p>goblue, that is interesting. Never heard of that before. Although, I’ve never heard of a course titled “acctg and operations” either. Although, I guess some colleges don’t have as generous transfer agreements with community colleges as others. </p>
<p>If anyone decides to go to cc, make sure you work with the 4yr you want to go to from the start, otherwise you’ll probably end up taking a whole bunch of courses that will not transfer and have to take very similar classes once you transfer, like i did for my Econ and Math classes.</p>