What classes in college will I need to take to become an accountant ?

A Business Administration degree will qualify you for Accounting jobs and CPA candidacy, provided you take 24 semester hours (about eight courses) in Accounting. For the CPA exam, you must have 150 semester hours (about five years) of college education, which can be achieved by either taking extra classes or enrolling in a MPAc or MBA program after graduation. Typical classes may include Financial Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Auditing, Taxation, International Accounting, Government Accounting, Budgeting, Fraud, and Incentives & Controls.

For most accounting jobs, it is not necessary to be a CPA, but the license will help your credibility because it is highly regulated by the individual states. There are many other accounting/auditing/finance certifications that do not carry the weight of law, and these are typically specialized to the type of work you do.

If you inspire to be an accountant, you will want to major in Accounting. Your Accounting degree will have a set of required accounting courses. You will start with an introduction accounting class and then be required to take more specialized accounting courses. The specialized accounting courses will include Management Tax, Corporate Tax, Personal Tax, and then finish with Intermediate Tax.

Accounting degree gives you various career paths. The main one is to become an Accountant for most companies. If you enjoy Accounting you can push yourself to become a Certified Public Accountant which opens up more doors and higher pay. It also opens up opportunities in Finance as a finance analyst, I am a Sales Finance Controller with a undergraduate degree in Finance and also have a Masters in Business Administration. When we hire Finance Analysts we look for individuals with a Finance degree or an Accounting degree.

It is great to hear you are in 11th grade and inquiring on what you want to study in college. If you have not already done so, sign up for any business courses at your high school for next year. This will give you a glimpse at what you will see in college.

Best of luck next year in your senior year of high school and in college.

Regards,
Seve

Hi Angel! It's so wonderful that you are already thinking about your career paths and interests while still in 11th grade! By asking these questions, you are definitely on the path to success!

To become an accountant, I think it is important to look at colleges that have a good Business school that offer the Accounting major or minor. First, uou will probably have to take a few introduction classes that every Business major has to take such as accounting, finance, marketing, management, and more. This will give you a good starting point to understand all areas of Business. After that, you can focus on more advance accounting courses which names vary by school. My classes were Financial Accounting, Intermediate Accounting, Tax, Auditing, Managerial accounting and more. I wouldn't worry too much about the exact courses, since you will have a college adviser and courses that your college requires you to take in order to graduate with that major. There will be other students going through the same process as you too!

There are so many job opportunities that come with studying accounting! Best of luck to you!