So to answer your question, the main reason why I decided not to do the 3/2 was I was able to get 150 credits to sit for the CPA exam in 4 years. I brought in roughly 30 credits from AP classes in high school, so I was always able to keep a manageable schedule.
Obviously, different companies and different people will value things differently, but I talked to a lot of people, and most of them didn’t think the MBA would be extremely valuable for a few reasons. One, the main reason why most people get MBAs is to do some sort of career pivot after they already have work experience. Since you probably have no work experience, you can’t do that. Two, the overall value of an MBA seems to be going down. This is somewhat anecdotal, but from talking to people working in accounting, it seems like the MBA used to be significantly more valuable than it is today, and employers don’t care about it as much. If you’re going into accounting, the CPA is almost universally seen as more important. And three, after working for a little bit (I’ve been working for roughly 1.5 years), you realize how little of what you learn in school is actually important for your job. Obviously some things will be useful, but nobody is going to put an exam on how to do consolidations or pension accounting at work. Most of what you need will be taught on the job, regardless of whether you have an MBA or not. It pretty much took me until I was done with school to realize that the real value of school (assuming you perform adequately and graduate) is the relationships you build with people rather than the actual content you learn. Except maybe Excel, that’s definitely useful lol.
The MBA offers value in terms of networking - you’re going to meet a lot of new people, and maintaining those relationships could certainly allow you to progress more quickly in your career. But for me, it wasn’t really worth paying a lot of money to get a degree that I ultimately don’t think will make much of a difference, especially in the beginning. And later, I could always decide to get another degree if I really want to.
I found some salary stats for the 3/2 program and also a list of top companies, but not sure if they have companies broken down by percentage.
I would also encourage you to pursue the data analytics/information systems side of things if that’s what you’re interested in. The classes where I learned Excel and VBA have been significantly more valuable to me at work than the accounting classes, so I would suggest taking as many coding classes as possible, even if you don’t want to become a full-time developer. If you have any interest in coding at all, I highly recommend it because it will make you extremely valuable if you know how to do it. I did the technology management co-major, and honestly, the VBA class I took from that was my most useful class I took at Kelley.
I would be surprised if I ever got an MBA, but I could see myself potentially doing a program like the MSIS at some point down the line. I’ve heard good things about the program, and you can make more money with that sort of skillset. To be completely honest, I think the MSIS would be more valuable even if you didn’t want to work in tech. The CPA review courses will teach you everything you need to know for the CPA exam as long as you put in the work, so even if you want to be a CPA and not work a true tech job, I think the MSIS would give you a much more valuable set of skills. And you could easily pivot to a more tech-focused career if later if you wanted to. This all assumes you have somewhat of an interest in coding/analytics/databases, but if you do, I would pursue that as much as possible!
This got very rambly and probably unorganized, so please feel free to ask any follow-up questions!