UCI vs UCSD vs CSUF for Masters of Accountancy?

Graduate School Business School - MBA
1

UCI has a Masters of Professional Accountancy program. They have partnered with Deloitte to create the Data Analytics track in their curriculum. CSUF has an MS Accountancy program and I have heard that they are a preferred school for the Big 4. Since both CSUF and UCI have the best Accounting programs in Orange County, I am not sure which one of those two schools are best for getting recruited by the Big 4 within the Orange County area?

UCSD has the newest graduate Accounting program and the school is getting ready to start their first cohorts beginning at Fall 2019. The Executive Director of UCSD’s Masters of Professional Accountancy program also seems to have many decades of experience in the Accounting profession and he has previously worked for three of the Big 4 (PwC, EY, Deloitte), while also being a partner at EY. Unlike the other two programs, there is not a lot of information about UCSD’s program because it is brand new, so I don’t have any idea of which Accounting firms that I can expect to attend networking events that are hosted within the program. However, I do know that the graduate Accounting program from UCSD will have a small class size of around 30 students since it is brand new, which means that I may have more opportunities to work closely with the Executive Director. This is the brochure of UCSD’s new graduate Accounting program, in case anyone hasn’t heard of it. https://rady.ucsd.edu/docs/programs/masters-programs/mpac/MPAc-brochure_WEB.pdf?pdf=MPAc-brochure

Either way, does it make much difference which school I attend from these 3 choices? I really don’t care too much about what city I live in as long as I am able to work for the Big 4. I already received an approval for admission to UCSD’s program, but I haven’t yet heard from the other schools. I am not too sure about the best way to prioritize the 3 schools, if working for the Big 4 is my biggest factor of making a decision because I don’t have a lot of information.

2

The Big 4 accounting firms are very competitive and getting your Masters in Accounting does not guarantee a Big 4 job. My guess is that the UC’s (especially the higher tier UC’s) are more targeted by the Big 4 than the CSU’s. There are spots for CSU’s, but not as many as for the UC’s.

Secondly, the Big 4 are infatuated with prestige and higher ranked schools. S is working at Deloitte and the targeted schools (meaning more openings available for those targeted schools than others) in the West Coast are: UC Berkeley; UCLA, USC; University of Washington; UCSB. If you are looking at a large Big 4 office such as LA, SF, they also target other big name prestigious schools from other parts of the country, i.e., Notre Dame, Michigan, Cornell, etc. This is the same when I was at PWC many years ago.

The 3rd point is that UCI’s has an established and good undergraduate business school ranked in the top 30 and the graduate (MBA) is ranked in the top 50 in the country. The Big 4 might see that more favorably than a CSU.

Lastly, wherever you decided to attend, get the best grades you can and work on soft skills. It is not the end of the world if you don’t secure a Big 4 job. The next tier of firms (BDO, Grant Thornton) are also good firms. Your goal is to get a CPA license. Good luck.

3

On my second point above, this is in reference to undergraduate schools since Big 4’s generally do not recruit MBA’s from UC Berkeley or UCLA for audit/assurance positions. They do for consulting positions.