Today I finally was able to get a straight answer out of someone about the education requirements necessary to sit for the CPA Exam in Colorado.

The first thing I learned

The education requirements to sit for the CPA exam in Colorado are different than the education requirements to get the CPA license in Colorado.

The Colorado CPA License education requirements are here: www.colorado.gov/DORA (Rule 2.5 explains the Education Requirements before July 1, 2015, and Rule 2.6 explains the requirements after July 1, 2015.)

The Colorado CPA Exam education requirements are here: www.nasba.org/exams/cpaexam/colorado/

The Cliff’s Notes version of the CPA Exam Requirements:

• 27 semester hours in accounting, including 3 in Auditing
• 21 semester hours in “other areas of business administration,” but not more than 6 semester hours in any one section can apply toward the total.

The second thing I learned

If you take any accounting classes above the 27 semester hours required to meet the CPA Exam education requirements, you can count 6 of them (2 classes) toward the 21 semester hours you need of “other business administration” courses.

So, if we look at the requirements I need to meet to get the Masters in Accounting from CU Denver:

• Accounting Prereqs (BUSN 6550, ACCT 6030 & 6070 — 9 semester hours)
• Common Body of Knowledge Classes (BUSN 6530 & 6620 — 6 semester hours)
• Accounting Core (12 semester hours, 3 for BUSN, 9 for ACCT)
• Accounting Capstone (6 semester hours)
• Accounting Electives (6 semester hours)
• Free Electives (6 semester hours)

How that stacks up with what I need to sit for the CPA Exam:

I have to have 45 semester hours (15 classes) in order to complete the Masters in Accounting Program.

• 9 of those classes have to be Accounting classes, so that satisfies the 27 semester hours in accounting required to sit for the CPA exam.
• 4 of those classes (12 semester hours) have to be Business classes
• That leaves 3 classes (9 semester hours) that I have to take to meet the “other business admin” classes requirement.
• 2 of those remaining classes (6 semester hours) can by met by my free electives, and can be accounting classes and still count toward to the 21 semester hour total.

So that just leaves one additional business class of some kind that I have to take (either at CU Denver or elsewhere) before I am eligible to sit for the CPA exam in Colorado.

This is much better than the extra classes I thought I was going to have to take in order to sit for the CPA exam.

It turns out that BUSN 6620 – Applied Economics for Managers, is one of the courses required for my Masters in Accounting Program. So that will probably be the class I end up taking this summer.

In addition, the fact that the course is only offered online might be a benefit this summer. I may have to do some traveling for work, and having my coursework online could be beneficial.

The BUSN 6520 – Managing Individuals and Teams class still sounds interesting, and I’ll have to take a few extra classes along the way, so maybe I’ll work on squeezing it in somewhere.

I just found out that enrollment for the Fall 2013 semester opens the first week of April. Yikes! In an attempt to be prepared for picking my classes, I’ve taken a look at the schedule for fall and have scheduled an advising appointment, just to see if the graduate advisers have any insights.

My Course Options

There are really only two classes that would make sense for me to take this Fall:

ACCT 6020 – Auditing Theory

This course is a pre-req for many of the other courses in the Accounting catalogue, so it would make sense to take it as soon as possible. Considering I’m taking its pre-req this semester (ACCT 6030 – Intermediate Financial Accounting), and it’s not offered this summer, fall 2013 is the first opportunity I’ve had to take it. I would be foolish not to.

I’m actually kind of excited about it. The class is being offered Mondays and Wednesday from 5 pm to 6:15 pm, and it’s being taught by the instructor about whom I’ve heard nothing but good reviews.

ACCT 6024 – Advanced Financial Accounting

I don’t need to take this course for the Masters Program, which would make it one of my electives. I also don’t have to take it for the CPA Exam, although I’ve been told it will help. I’ve talked to the instructor, and he says that taking the course would be beneficial to what I want to do after I have my license (help small businesses).

I am actually really excited about this class. In the first place, it’s being taught by the instructor of my ACCT 6070 – Cost Accounting class, whom I adore. In the second place, the instructor’s teaching style is much more conducive to my learning style that the instructor of my Intermediate Financial Accounting class, so I’m hoping that the Advanced Financial Accounting class will fill in any holes in my knowledge from this semester.

Seems like a pretty solid plan, actually…

Huh. Having written it out, maybe I don’t need to have a meeting with the graduate advising staff tomorrow.

Accounting Options

Unfortunately, there are no Accounting courses offered this summer term that I am eligible to take (or even interested in, really) due to the necessary pre-requisites. So that’s disappointing, but not really a surprise.

Other Options

I do need to take some business classes to meet the CPA Exam requirements for Colorado, so I’ve taken a look at the classes offered this summer.

BUSN 6520 – Managing Individuals and Teams

This class actually sounds really interesting, but I’m not sure which CPA exam requirement it would fulfill. I’m hoping it might meet the “3 semester hours must be in business, technical, or accounting communications” requirement.

To be sure, I sent the course code to NASBA, and hopefully they’ll let me know if I can take it.

BUSN 6610 – Information Systems Management and Strategy

This course seems much less interesting to me, and it’s only offered online (for an extra $100 fee!), but it might count toward the requirements.

BUSN 6620 – Applied Economics for Managers

Another course that doesn’t seem as interesting to me, but could count toward the requirements. Also only offered online. I’m not a fan of online classes.

BUSN 6640 – Financial Management

This course looks like it could be both interesting an useful. It’s not offered online. If I am not able to take the “Managing Individuals and Teams” class, I may take this one instead. Assuming NASBA comes back and tells me it counts.

The Other Other Option: Taking the Summer Off

As much as I would love to take the summer off, if there are any classes that will meet the requirements, I will take them. I want to be done with my degree and on my way to having a CPA license as quickly as I can.

This past Thursday I had a test for both of my classes. Since I knew that my Financial Accounting class was going to be over a lot of material (6 chapters!), I decided to get started studying early. Friday night (two Fridays ago, now), I hunkered down at my desk and started working on the homework for the class that had been suggested but not assigned. I figured, what better way to study for an exam than to go over the problems from each chapter that the teacher thinks we should know how to do, and make sure I know how to do them.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never studied so hard in my life. Once I started Friday night, I basically didn’t stop until the day of tests.

Studying like WOAH

Since blogs are (mostly) for the writer anyway, I’m going to record the craziness of my schedule last week, for posterity, if nothing else.

Friday night: I started with listening to the recording of a class I had missed a few weeks ago. I wanted to make sure I had all the notes before I started studying.

Saturday: I woke up around 8 am, puttered around the house doing chore-type things for an hour or so, and then buckled down. I spent most of Saturday studying just Chapter 7 and doing the homework. I was feeling a little stressed out at the end of the day, because I knew that there were five more chapters to go, studying wise. I think I went to bed at midnight-thirty.

Sunday: I got up at 7:30 (I thought it was 6:30 and was really excited, until I remembered that we had “sprung forward.” Stupid daylight savings time.) and got right to work. I finished studying Chapter 8 by lunch, but Chapter 10 took me most of the rest of the night.

Despite the fact that I knew I had to get up for work the next morning, when I got done with Chapter 10 at 8:45 pm and decided to start on Chapter 11 (after taking a short break to talk to my husband, who’s out of town on business).

Monday:I did some Chapter 11 studying during lunch at work, and then the rest when I got home after running some errands (despite my hectic study schedule, I needed groceries, or I would go hungry during the rest of the week).

I finished with Chapter 11 around 9:30 and started right in on Chapter 12. Fortunately, Chapter 12 was a smaller chapter, from which we only needed to know a few concepts, so I was able to finish my studying for Chapter 12 on Monday.

Tuesday: Since I was done with Chapter 12, and we hadn’t yet gone over Chapter 18 because there had been no class the previous Thursday, I decided to listen to the lecture I missed from my Managerial Accounting class during lunch.

When I got home after my Financial Accounting class, I listened to the rest of that missed Managerial class and then I went to bed. I knew I should have stayed up and studying some of Chapter 18, but I was so tired, and I felt the onset of a cold. I didn’t want to get sick the week of my two tests, so I decided to try to do a little pre-emptive sleeping.

Wednesday: I started the day at work off strong, planning to do some studying of Chapter 18 during lunch, and then the rest when I got home that night. However, around 11 am, I started really feeling my pending illness (my sleeping the night before hadn’t helped as much as I would have liked), and so I told my supervisor that I needed to go home.

I napped on the bus home, which made me feel a little better, so I decided to get some studying done on Chapter 18 if I could. I made it through to dinner time with only a brief study break in the middle, but then my brain and body gave out on me, and I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up and decided to have some tea and watch some mindless TV to get myself back into the studying mood. It worked well enough, and I was able to review the flashcards I had made for both my classes for about an hour each before bed.

Thursday: TEST DAY I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck, but I knew I had to pull myself together if I was going to be able to sit for my tests. I took some DayQuil, started to feel a bit better, and focused on reviewing the test material for my Managerial Accounting class, which I hadn’t really had time to look at until then (other than the flashcards I’d made).

I made it through the first test (barely) although that was less a function of the fact that I was feeling a little under the weather and more a function of the fact that the test was freaking HARD (17 pages; in 1 hour and 15 minutes. And they weren’t simple questions). More on that after we get our tests back this evening.

I wasn’t originally planning to go the second test since I had received permission from the teacher to take it the following Tuesday, but I was already downtown, and as ready as I was going to be to take it, so I thought, ‘What the heck,’ and went to class. The second test actually went much better than the first, and my DayQuil didn’t even start to wear off until half-way through my bus ride home, which was a blessing.

My weekend, after all that

Friday I spent sleeping. I think I got up three times. It was glorious.

When I woke up Saturday morning, I felt (almost) like a real person again, but to play it safe I spent the day puttering around the house, not thinking too hard.

By Sunday I was fully recovered, and even did a little reading of the next chapter (13) for Financial Accounting.

Three tests down…

Last Thursday’s tests mark three tests down (two for Financial Accounting and one for Managerial Accounting) and four to go (two for Financial, two for Managerial). We may have a discussion with our Financial Accounting instructor about the pace with which we’re moving through the material relative to how much he expects us to know, and how complicated his tests are. We’ll see how that goes.

A question that has come up for me a lot in the course of going back to school to get my Masters in Accounting is, “Will this course actually help me meet the requirements to sit for the CPA exam, or will it be a waste of my time and money?”

To attempt to answer this question, I talked to someone in my school’s graduate advising office, who directed me to someone at the Colorado Society of CPAs, who directed me to someone at the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies Board of Accountancy, who gave me the number for someone in the licensing department at NASBA, who directed me to someone in actually the right department (the exam department) at NASBA, who gave me an email address.

At least for Colorado (the exam for which is overseen by NASBA), to determine if a course will meet the eligibility requirements, you have to send your school name and the course code in question to cpaes-co@nasba.org.

So now you know. I suspect that you could repace the CO in that email address with the abbreviation for any state which has its exam overseen by NASBA and get the right person. In case I’m wrong about that, the number for the exam department at NASBA is (800) 272-3926.

I’ve gone ahead and added all of this information to the Resources page, which you should feel free to bookmark for future reference.

Well, only one of my classes is really hard, but I find that I’m working just as hard this semester (if not harder) than I was last semester when I had three classes. I really thought this whole “two class” thing would be a nice break! Shows what I know…

ACCT 6030 – Intermediate Financial Accounting

We had our first of four tests in Financial Accounting. At the end of the day, I got a 76%, which is (obviously), not ideal. The issue, I feel, is that my foundational knowledge of accounting is not as solid and it could/should be, and this first test tested mostly that. Since getting that test back, I have unearthed my textbook from the “Fundamentals of Accounting” that I didn’t quite finish and have been going back through it, making sure to focus primarily on the areas I missed on that first test. Sadly, the BUSN 6050 class that I took last semester is not nearly as helpful as it could be when it comes to preparation for Intermediate Financial Accounting.

However, I have been keeping up on my reading in the textbook, and don’t find anything that I’m learning unbearably dull or difficult, so I think I’ll survive (and possibly excel) as the semester goes on. Stay tuned.

ACCT 6070 – Managerial Accounting

There are no words for how much I love my teacher for Managerial Accounting. It’s such a nice break from Financial Accounting because the pace of the class is a lot slower, and the teacher explains things in a way that I can really grok. I’m considering taking Advanced Financial Accounting with the same teacher in the fall (even though I don’t really need to), just because I like him so much.

Parting thoughts

The only downside to my Financial Accounting class being so hard is that I haven’t had hardly any time to read the text for Managerial Accounting, or do the homework that is recommended but not actually going to be collected. I’ve been doing a really good job of keeping up with the (assigned) homework in my Financial Accounting class, but I just can’t ever quite get ahead enough to get to the non-assigned stuff in either class.

Hopefully after this next weekend I’ll be able to focus more on my studies and get some work done for my Managerial class, too.

Third week of classes just started, and I feel like a bit of a slacker because I haven’t been updating this blog as much as I would like. There’s a good reason for that though: in the first part of January, my husband decided to change careers. So on top of getting ready for school, we were also getting ready for his transition.

ACCT 6030 – Intermediate Financial Accounting

I was shocked when I got my textbook for this class. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but it was almost three inches thick. Hardcover. The thing weighed almost 6 lbs.

On the first day of class, I learned why the textbook is so massive. It turns out that, at the undergraduate level, Intermediate Financial Accounting is offered as two classes, and generally taken over two semesters. At the graduate level, however, it’s offered as one class, all crammed into one semester. The quantity of content is the same, you just go through it faster. As my professor said, “It’s a whirlwind tour, and you just have to hold on to your hat and keep moving.”

As soon as I figured out that the class, and therefore the book, was designed to be split up into two sections, I took my ridiculously heavy textbook to Kinko’s (Yeah, I know it’s called “FedEx Office” now, but… well, it was Kinko’s for a lot longer, okay?) and had them cut the book in half and spiral bind it. Best decision I could have made, because I’ve carried the first half of the textbook with me to work every single day. I have to read it on the bus to-and-from, as well as during lunch, just to keep up.

The first half of the textbook, spiral bound

Side view, with quarter to reference size

Despite the heavy workload, the class is fantastic so far. The professor is great — a really big nerd about accounting, which I love — and I’m really enjoying learning about accounting in a more detail.

The fact that I’m enjoying the class is good because, apparently, “Intermediate Financial Accounting” is to the Accounting profession what “Organic Chemistry” is to the Medical profession: the weed out class. As my professor said yesterday, “If you can’t make it through this class, the rest of your life [as an accountant] is going to suck.”

ACCT 6070 – Managerial Accounting

My Managerial Accounting class only meets once a week (Thursdays), and I missed last Thursday’s class because I had a nasty cold. Even so, I suspect it’s going to be my favorite class this semester. The professor is awesome. He’s like everyone’s favorite uncle or grandparent. He’s got a great sense of humor, he tells great stories, and he’s just generally a really nice guy. I can’t wait to see what it’ll be like when we get into the meat of Managerial Accounting, since all I’ve heard him lecture about so far is the layout of the course (requisite syllabus discussion on the first day of class) and an overview of accounting (to give us a sense of where cost accounting fits into the profession in general).

I can’t wait for Thursday’s class.

Biggest Lesson Learned Thus Far

If you’re planning to go into a Master of Accounting program with little or no accounting in your background, it would behoove you to take an “Intro to Accounting” (or “Fundamentals of Accounting,” or whatever your local community college/university calls it) class at the undergraduate level. Intermediate Financial Accounting at the graduate level assumes that you have some familiarity with basic accounting concepts like

• how to journalize transactions,
• how to close out accounts at the end of the period,
• whether Assets has a debit balance or a credit balance,
• what T-accounts are and how to use them, and
• what the four financial statements look like and a basic idea of how to prepare them.

Since I only really learned half of the information from the undergraduate “Fundamentals of Accounting” class that I signed up for last Spring, I’m struggling a little.

Would my life be easier if I’d made it past Chapter 4 of the Fundamentals textbook? Yes, of course.
Will I be able to manage this course anyway? You bet.
But if I had it to do all over again, I would have finished the Fundamentals coursework last summer, before the my fall semester graduate studies started.