I feel like 90 things have happened in the last two months, the end result of which is that I’m moving across the country and I will be attending Western Michigan University (WMU/Western) to complete my Master’s in Accounting, instead of completing it at CU Denver.
The Short Version
My husband has been living and working in Michigan for the last year (almost), and I will be joining him. Originally we thought he was going to move back out to Colorado after 9 months of job training, but we talked about it and decided that there were some opportunities for him (and us) in Michigan that we couldn’t pass up. So… Eastward, ho!
The Long Version
What this all means is that I will not be attending classes this Spring 2014 semester (which has already started at both WMU and CU Denver), as I am currently packing up our condo to move us across the country in… *checks watch* … almost exactly three days.
What follows is a fairly detailed account of why that’s happening and how I went about researching the transfer to Western.
Moving to Michigan
In June of this year (2013), I went to Michigan to visit my husband, who has been living there since February, working with his mom and learning the financial planning profession. One of the things we decided while I was there was that he wanted to continue working with his mom in Michigan, which meant that, at some point, I would be moving to Michigan, too.
The only major question that remained was when I was going to move.
I had already registered for the Fall semester at CU Denver, and I was really looking forward to the two classes I was going to take. So unless there was a really compelling reason to do so, I wasn’t going to be moving until at least December.
Another consideration was the fact that my current job is on a July to June fiscal year, so it might make some sense to move in July 2014, after the 2014 fiscal year ended. That seemed a bit long to wait to move, but moving in the summer is definitely easier than moving in the winter, so July had that going for it.
Given the bracket of December at the earliest and July at the latest, we decided to tentatively plan on April, and adjust as necessary.
What that meant as far as my path to becoming a CPA was concerned was a bit unclear, but I knew that I was going to finish the Fall semester and I wasn’t going to be taking any classes in the spring, due to the uncertain nature of our move date, so that was a place to start.
Changing Schools
Fast forward four months to October…
About halfway through the Fall semester, I decided it was time to start looking into transferring to Western. I went to their website, checked out their Masters of Accounting program, and found the contact info for the person I needed to contact to determine where I stood.
I can’t say enough good things about the woman I emailed and eventually spoke with. Her name is Barb Caras-Tomczak, and she’s kind and thorough and very, very helpful, which is exactly what you want in an advisor and primary contact person for a graduate program. She asked me to send her my transcripts for undergrad and my graduate work so far, and she would let me know where I stood.
Interesting fact that I did not know before my conversation with Barb: you can only transfer six credit hours (two classes) of graduate level classes from one accredited institution to another. When I found this out, I was terribly concerned because I thought none of the coursework I had done so far was going to count. However, because I went into this “Becoming a CPA” plan with exactly zero background in accounting or business, all of the classes I’ve taken thus far (with one exception) have been pre-reqs as far as Western is concerned. And because Western’s pre-reqs for their accounting Master’s degree are all undergraduate classes, every course I’ve taken so far will transfer.
Because Michigan’s requirements to become a CPA are more robust than Colorado’s, I still have a few pre-reqs to take, which I am planning to knock out this summer semester. After that, I will be starting on the actual meat of my “Masters of Science in Accounting,” which is kind of exciting.
The really cool thing about Western’s program is that, if you follow their course plan, they guarantee that you will graduate with the right credits to both be eligible to sit for the CPA exam and to get the CPA license once you’ve fulfilled the work requirement. That is not a promise I’ve been able to get from CU Denver, which makes me really excited about this move.
Getting a Job in Michigan
Fast forward again to Thanksgiving…
I was in Michigan to see Ben, and his mom suggested that I meet with her CPA to talk about job prospects for me when I move out to join Ben. The four of us went to lunch on the Monday before Thanksgiving, at which point Mary (the CPA) mentioned that she was looking for someone to intern at her firm for the 2014 tax season, and would I love to come by her office after lunch for an interview?
On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Mary called me and said that she would like to offer me the position, especially because she knows it would mean that I would get back to Michigan to see Ben sooner, which she knew we would appreciate, and she was fully willing to support. She wanted me to start on February 5, 2014.
Thus began the whirlwind process of planning to move three months sooner than we thought, which involved selling our condo, selling my car (it’s old, and didn’t want to make the trip across the country again), and packing up all of our stuff. We’re at the tail end of the packing, and everything is going pretty well. I can’t wait for Friday, at which point everything will be done, for better or worse, and we’ll be on our way.
