It's felt like forever since I graduated college. I wanted to write this for the people who are deciding to go to college but don't know what to major in. I also want to write this for the students who are one or two years in but haven't decided on a major yet.
First off, I would encourage people to go into the trades like plumbing, construction, or mechanics. The reason for this is that these usually only require a two year certification. A lot of college will be a complete waste of time.
I went to college for accounting, yet I was taking classes like American Folklore, Introduction to Film, Nutrition, and Psychology.
If you must go to college, make sure you pick a major in STEM or with good employment prospects.
Make sure to research starting salaries and if you are likely to get hired upon graduation.
I did none of this when I left high school. I guess I just got really luck.
The whole reason why I chose to major in accounting was as following.
I wanted to be a business major and accounting stated with an A.
Ok, it wasn't that simple of logic but it was pretty close. I chose accounting after figuring out not what I liked in high school but what I loathed.
I absolutely hated, English, foreign languages, chemistry, and physics. This didn't leave me with very many options. My logic was that all I had left was business and majoring in business would be a safe bet because America is full of businesses. BUSINESS. I'm going to major in BUSINESS.
If I had to do research for job prospects today, accounting is okay and pretty safe.
1. You can become a staff accountant with just a bachelor's degree. You don't need advanced certifications, a master's degree, or pass a $600 test.
2. According to payscale, the median salary for a staff accountant is $44,500 a year.
3. There is room to advance and get promotions to senior accountant, accounting manager, CPA, controller, etc.
As for getting the degree, it wasn't too painful. It actually seemed like the path of least resistance for me in college. Keep in mind these may be different for where you go to college.
1. I was not required to take any higher level math beyond basic algebra and statistics.
2. I was not required to take a foreign language.
3. I was not required to take complicated science courses such as chemistry and physics.
I was require to take a lot of useless classes but that would have been the case with any major I took. Out of 120 credit hours I needed to graduate, only 24 credit hours were accounting classes.
These are the accounting classes I took. Your experience may vary.
1. Principles of Accounting 1
This class is an overview of accounting in general. You learn what assets and liabilities are. You learn what information is listed on the 4 basic financial statements. You learn how to make basic journal entries. You learn about the concept of how assets depreciate. You also learn how bank reconciliations are done and how to do a break even point analysis. I also remember learning how to calculate cost of goods sold and how to make adjusting entries.
2. Principles of Accounting 2
This class is more or less finance. What that means is that 70% of this class is time value problems. You may use a financial calculator or tables in the back of the book to calculate problems about the present value or future value of a dollar. You learn about how to calculate the value of annuities and investments. I remember drawing a lot of timelines because some of the questions get kind of complex.
3. Professional Accounting
This class was very much a filler class. Luckily it was just one hour. You learn how to network, interview, and find a job in accounting. Unfortunately, they didn't give the best advice. Networking is absolutely terrible. Thank you cards and follow ups don't work. To find an accounting job, I had to apply and apply a lot.
4. Intermediate Accounting.
This class is an expansion of Accounting 1. You learn more FASB and IFRS concepts and how different situations would be treated. You learn more complex topics like how to handle accounting for leases. You delve further into creating depreciation schedules for different assets. You handle more complicated journal entries.
5. Transaction Analysis
This was a one credit hour class I took. It was also an expansion of Accounting 1. I do recall we went further into adjusting entries.
6. Cost Accounting
What I remember most about this class is variances. We took various figures and calculated ratios to determine why a result happened. If we use lower quality materials, we may produce a cheaper product but it breaks down faster. This class would be more relevant to me if I would for a manufacturing company. When you hear cost accounting, just remember variances.
7. Database Accounting
We used Microsoft Access to look for errors in accounting systems. This class was very light in actual accounting. What this class focuses on is showing you how to calculate different values on accounting systems using accounting software. I clearly remember creating queries to calculate cost of goods sold. You will also go into making flow charts.
8. Tax Accounting
We learned how business are taxed and how different entities are treated differently by our tax code. Tax law makes absolutely no sense and has no logic. Our professor said so himself. All you can do is memorize it. Which is completely not how the real world works. You can't memorize tax law. In the real world, we do research to find out how things are taxed. It is for this reason our professor let us take 3 note cards into our exams. This class has no actual accounting in it. No journal entries, no depreciation, no financial statements, no ratios.
9. Financial Statement Analysis
You learn how to take the financial statements of different companies and learn how to calculate different ratios to determine information about different companies. Some useful ratios are the current ratio, debt to equity ratio, and employee turnover rate.
10. Audit
This class was a pain. You learn assertions about how audits are done. Once again, there is no actual accounting here. You learn about different audit cases and how to handle different situations.
Accounting wasn't the easiest major. It was very methodical and process driven. It can be very repetitive and tedious. This is the case in college and actually working as an accountant. Keep in mind that when you first start working as an accountant, it is very likely that you won't use 80% or 90% of all the stuff you learned studying accounting (the 24 accounting hours I mentioned).
If you don't know what you want to major in, I would still recommend accounting.
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