<p>Build your gpa as high as possible going into icore. Icore will likely hurt your gpa, and as hkem says, the upper level finance and accounting classes will be tough. A high gpa going into Icore will be a buffer for the later tough grading classes. Use the grade distribution for the upper levels. There is usually a preferred prof for just about every accounting/finance class. Problem is, if you don’t have tons of credits going into registration, you might not be able to get those profs, as all the students who came to IUB with lots of AP credit will sign up for them first.</p>
<p>Decide if you are going to graduate with 150 credits. If you are, and you are doing it in four years, you can take a lot of classes at cc prior to starting Icore and transfer them to IUB without hurting your gpa. Probably 70-85% of people looking for accounting jobs senior year have also double majored in finance. A large proportion of these are on pace for the 150 credits, and you need to be on pace for the 150 for Big Four firms and many regional firms to even interview you. (Also, most Big Four hires will be after post-junior year summer internships; so you need to get their attention before senior year to have you best chance of being hired.) This translates into going into Icore (fall semester of junior year) with about 90 credits, as you want your post-junior year to be free for an internship. Also, Kelley has the residency requirement that the last 30 credits be taken on the IUB campus, although I don’t know that they enforce it. Also, you can do one P/F course per semester at IUB to help get to your 150. Look for something you can get at least a “D” in without much effort, and you will get the P grade and be closer to the 150 at graduation.</p>
<p>At a school like Kelley IUB, I think the Big Four interviewees at the ugrad level need at least a 3.6 with lots of ECs to even begin to be competitive for interviews. Remember that you will be competing against the top ugrads (out of four or five hundred accounting majors), eighty or so MSAs, and many 3.2 MBAs. That is a lot of potential hires, especially considering that companies like to take new hires from a lot of different schools for various reasons. You can look at the class profile for the Kelley MSA students and see the program growth there (from 44 in 2010 to 84 in 2013), probably because IUB accounting ugrads could not get good jobs and had to go into the MSA program.
<a href=“http://kelley.iu.edu/GAP/MS%20in%20Accounting/Class%20Profiles/page29994.html”>http://kelley.iu.edu/GAP/MS%20in%20Accounting/Class%20Profiles/page29994.html</a>
Remember, too, that you will have to put your “accounting major gpa” on your resume, along with your overall gpa. You want both of these to be as high as possible.</p>