<p>I'm pretty confident in my knowledge of what big 4 accounting work actually entails, but could anyone give me some insight on what/how long a typical workday for a big 4 CPA right out of college is?</p>
<p>Depends on a few things.</p>
<p>Big 4 work weeks are a minimum of 50 hours and are normally about 60-70. Audit tends to work a bit longer than Tax. If you get assigned to several large clients and you're always assigned to something, then you're going to be working long hours year-round. If you tend to get assigned to smaller clients, you'll probably have some down time during the summer where you work the minimum.</p>
<p>I can't tell you much about the workday for tax other than the fact that they spend a lot more time in the office than audit does (if you're in audit, you'll see the office only a few times a year). If you're in audit, you're day will vary a bit according to the client. If it's a large client, you'll be working at their location for some time (some people work most of the year on the same client). As entry-level, you spend a lot of your time doing the basic, easy audits (such as cash and inventory).</p>
<p>^^^ LOL, audit does live outside the office... at a tour of PWC last year, I remember the audit manager showing us around the office... the tax area was full of people in cubicles doing work, and the audit area was just a bunch of blank cubicles with nothing on the desks, because their computers are the laptops they take with them! I remember thinking, why do they even have desks?</p>