what to major in if you want to be an accountant?

A bachelor's degree in Accounting is a great foundation.

Hi,
Good question...the obvious answer would be Accounting but not always the best way to go depending on your future career goals. For example, you can study Business Administration/Management with a concentration or emphasis in Accounting or possibly Computer Information Science with a minor in Accounting. Typically all you need is 12-15 hours in Accounting to get hired for an entry level job.
HEre is a good link that shows a lot of different careers/majors for Accounting:
http://www.njscpa.org/index/students/career-path/careers
Good luck!

Hi Darrian,
A bachelor's degree in Accounting is the most common but another option would be to major in Finance, a lot of the classes are similar but Finance gives you a little different perspective than Accounting so that is always an option if you don't want to take only Accounting classes.

Hope that helps!

Hi Darrian -

Speaking from experience, I think the best major would be 'Accounting', if your school, or prospective school offers such major. However, with that being said, having a background in general business, and math will help, depending on the type of accounting you focus in on, and practice. The great thing about working at a large accounting firm is you can endure many types of experience, and see which is the best for you. Some of these various types of accounting include: Tax, Audit (External & Internal), IT Audit, and many more.

As a take away, if you are interested in accounting, and your school offers that as a major, or area of focus, then I strongly recommend majoring in that!

Look forward to hearing what your decision ends up being.

Best,

Kyle

In today's accounting environment most public accounting firms require an employee to have a credential like passing the CPA exam and being a certified public accountant before that person can move up into a management role in the company. In order to be eligible to take the CPA exam, a person must have at least 150 eligible college credits to sign up. In order to accumulate that many college credits most people find they must have an advanced degree like a Master's degree. When applying for a Master's program, a fair number of schools do not want the applicant to have an undergraduate degree in accounting. An undergraduate degree in accounting does give someone a broader base of accounting knowledge, but it does not necessarily qualify them to work toward a Master's degree at certain colleges and universities.  

So my advice is to check out your options and see what is required if you want to get an advanced degree. We hire people with all sorts of undergraduate degrees that are unrelated to accounting but if that is the path taken, a Master of accounting or comparable advanced degree would be required.  

Hi Darrian,

I would say that any major in the Finance or Accounting area would be accepted to become an accountant as both of the industries play a big part in each other's daily work lives. I found out that alot of the finance classes I had to take in my accounting program at college did come into practice on my daily work schedule.

Best of Luck,

Many schools will offer an accounting major within their business school. Depending on what you want to do as an accountant you may also want to get a masters in accounting or a MBA. You should see the courses offered by the college you attend/are looking at.