So you want to become an accountant; that is good, but first you must go off to school. This article will discuss what to expect at accounting school as well as some top accounting schools and online accounting schools.
Once you get to school, be prepared to work hard. Although accountants are often portrayed as unintelligent, incompetent people on Television, in real-life they are extremely hard-working and most of them are very bright. While at school be ready to work in teams. The truth is that a lot of accounting is done in teams. If you work for one of the Big 4 accounting firms, then you’ll be working with a team every day. Accounting schools are doing their best to prepare their students for these team environments.
Some of the classes you will take with at school consist of financial accounting, managerial accounting, tax, audit, and information systems. Surprisingly accountants don’t take many math classes. You’ll need to understand how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide but that is about the extent of math in accounting.
After you are done with your studies of accounting you can expect to get a job. This is perhaps one of the best consequences of choosing to go to accounting school. Every company needs accountants and even in the recession there are still plenty of accounting jobs available (although it isn’t as easy as it was a few years ago).
Some Top Accounting Schools:
- Brigham Young University (BYU)
- University of Illinois
- University of Texas- Austin
- University of Michigan
- University of Notre Dame
- All the Ivy League Schools, although they aren’t as well renowned for being the best accounting schools.
Some Online Accounting Schools
- University of Phoenix
- Strayer University
- Kaplan University
- Argosy University
- Devry University
You can find an online accounting school that people will respect, but in most situations an actual university will go a lot further than some of the online schools. Not that the online schools don’t do just as good of job teaching, just that people are biased towards physical schools.
Note that the types of jobs available after you finish school will vary drastically. Accountants usually specialize in audit, tax, or managerial accounting. In addition within each field there is further specialization (for example some auditors specialize in telecom audit, some tax accountants specialize in corporate tax).
In short there are a lot of good options after you get out of school, but keep your eyes opened for areas that you want to specialize in.
