[~*BaybeE*~]

So I still have no idea what i want to major in. People ask you 2 questions when you say something like that.

1) What are you interested in?
2) What are you good at?

I've heard it many times...lol^^
but my answer has never changed. I am not interested in anything, nothing has ever reallie triggered me. and I am not specifically good at anything.

Well my friend was looking at my grades and she saw that the highest grade was always math.

So she had some friends that are majoring in accounting or are accountants already, and so all the sudden i was thinking about accounting because I have no idea which road to take. (I am easily persuaded...T.T")

So can anyone tell me about the classes you need to take in college, what the major is like, what an accountant really does exactly..and etc...

thanks in advance! =P

[marrymehyori]

Accountants account for the money in a business. That means tracking revenues, expenses, assets (purchase price, current price, depreciation), liabilities, equity, etc. Mostly for the purposes of preparing financial statements, but also complying with Sarbanes-Oxley, possibly calculating taxes, and a number of other functions. It's actually not all that much math, since you have programs to do it for it, or at worst you use a calculator, and anyways it is really just addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. There's no differential equations or simultaneous sets of linear equations or anything like that, just the basics. But you really have to know the concepts, theories, and standards (cost accounting, tax accounting, GAAP, FASB, etc. etc.), that's where the real value of an accountant lies - knowing what rules to apply when, not in how to add up endless columns of numbers.

You should consult your school's course catalog for what classes are required by the major and look up those course descriptions.

[dunpingy]

After graduation, accountants have many options to choose from. Accountants usually end up falling into three categories: audit, tax, or some sort of advisory/consulting position.

AUDIT

This involves ensuring that a company's financial statements are fairly stated. At the entry level, this involves a lot of Excel work and making sure the company has reliable and functional controls (by testing them). A 'control' is basically a system in place to cath errors or fraud. Theres two types of audit: internal and external. Internal audit has to do more with processes whereas external audit has more to do with the outputs of those processes. These two are usually combined unless you are in public accounting, then they must be separated due to potential violations of independence.

TAX

Self explanatory...some people really enjoy tax because each tax form is like a little puzzle to them. Qualified tax accountants are in high demand.

ADVISORY

There are so many advisory service lines these days its ridiculous. I recommend going to any of the Big4's websites and taking a look.


So after you graduate, there's many career paths available:

CORPORATE ACCOUNTING AND FINANCE

Basically you'll be working at one company, and depending on how large the firm is you might have a very wide range of duties. To keep things simple, generally you'll be working creating financial reports and making sure the company has the right processes in place to help produce those reports.

PUBLIC ACCOUNTING

This job involves a lot of interpersonal skills, since the job is very team based and client intensive. Basically its a professional service, and you will be visiting different client sites, giving advice and making sure they are doing things correctly. Public accounting firms offer an extremely wide range of services, if you like business at all you'll be able to find something you're interested in.

CONSULTING/I-BANKING/INVESTMENT SERVICES

An accounting degree can land you any of these jobs. Consulting firms have a very high demand for accountants. Investment banks don't care where you come from.

Just make sure you get your CPA after graduation - this separates the professionals from the bean counters. Also, remember that what you do in class doesn't reflect on your career path at all. I absolutely hate cost accounting and tax so after school I don't plan on touching any of those with a ten foot pole. There are plenty of accounting career opportunities that simply don't involve accounting at all. The degree itself is just useful, you can get any job with an accounting degree that you could with a finance degree, but not the other way around. Thats because accountants must understand finance by nature, but finance majors usually don't know very much at all about accounting (so we're more well rounded).

http://www.cpanet.com/cpa_forum/default.asp
Thats a pretty interesting place just to browse around. Let me know if you have any questions about what I said, I pretty much glossed over everything

[~*BaybeE*~]

omg thank you so much~~~ i had no idea there were so many different types of accountants and that this field was so complex. Are you guys all majoring in accounting? what year are you? and is it hard?

[marrymehyori]

I just graduated this past December with a degree in taxation, and one of the tricky things about that is that the rules for taxes are often in conflict with GAAP and other accounting principles.  It was a lot of work, but the tax code is very complex and not always rational, but accounting more generally tries to be more consistent.  Some people find it no more difficult than anything else, others find it so hard they have to switch majors.  The only way to know how you'll do with it is to take the intro courses.  If you like it and can handle the work load, it's a fine major with great career potential.

[dunpingy]

I'm graduating this semester with a Master's in Accountancy, which I did because there is a 150 credit hour requirement to sit for the CPA in Illinois.

I never thought accounting was terribly difficult, theres very little math involved - whats most important is practice and a fundamental understanding of how the system is set up. Also, remember when you're learning how to do journal entries and account reconciliation that almost everything is automated by computers these days. Even if you find it painfully boring midway through, I recommend just sticking with it and graduating with the degree, as long as you're still interested in business. There were some classes I couldn't stand either..just learn it and get it over with, it doesn't mean you'll have to see that material again when you're working.