Accounting Major
Are you someone who loves numbers and loves using their know-how to solve real-world problems? You may already be thinking about an accounting major, and it’s a good thought to have. An accounting degree is one of the most practical ones you can get, and is always in demand.
In this article, we’ll cover a lot about the coursework for an accounting major and careers for accounting majors. We’ll discuss what you can do with an accounting degree and more, including:
- What accounting actually is
- The pros and cons of an accounting major
- Whether getting an accounting major is hard
- The salary outlook for someone with an accounting degree
- A list of the best schools for accounting
- Why study accounting vs. finance
Keep reading to find out more about what to expect from an accounting degree and whether an accounting major is right for you.
What is accounting?
Before you decide to pursue an accounting major, you may be wondering: What actually is accounting?
Accounting is the process of tracking, organizing, analyzing, and reporting financial information to help individuals and organizations make informed decisions. As you can see, it’s a very broad field. Accounting touches on almost every part of a business that has to do with money — so, essentially all of it.
Every time a company sells a product, pays an employee, or takes out a loan, someone has to record that transaction accurately. It’s crucial that these numbers are tracked and recorded precisely, and that’s the work of an accountant. They make sure that all these numbers add up, literally and figuratively. Accountants then help companies prepare tax returns, budget, detect fraud, and help businesses comply with regulations.
Have you ever tracked your allowance, planned a budget based on your income and expenses, or worked out splitting a bill with friends? If so, you’ve had experience with some of the skills needed for accounting. Accounting majors cultivate and develop those skills into assets they can use throughout their careers, when the stakes (and paychecks!) are higher.
Is accounting a good major?
Whether accounting is a good major depends on what your priorities are. For many people, an accounting major is a great choice. The first reason for that: stability. No matter what’s happening in the economy, businesses will always need to track their money, file their taxes, and comply with financial regulations. So even when other industries are plagued by layoffs, demand for accountants tends to remain pretty strong.
Another great perk about being an accounting major is versatility. With a bachelor’s degree in accounting, you’re not locked into one industry — you can get a lot of different jobs. You could work in a public accounting firm, at a corporation, for a nonprofit, for the government, or even in healthcare. If you’re organized and a strong mathematical thinker, you could apply those skills to another sector that you care about with an accounting major.
However, being an accounting major does come with challenges. Accounting degrees and getting a bachelor’s degree in accounting involves pretty rigorous coursework; a career in accounting requires close attention to detail. Moreover, some paths require extra credentials. Certified Public Accountants get more opportunities, but you’ll need to complete more educational requirements before you can earn that title. But, if you’re down with going the extra mile, an accounting major sets you up for job security in the long run.
Remember, business accounting isn’t one single job. A student who studies business accounting might end up auditing Fortune 500 companies. But they’re also likely to find themselves balancing the books for a local nonprofit or building out financial systems for a startup. That versatility is why it’s so appealing to many students.
Skills You’ll Develop as an Accounting Major
When you’re pursuing your accounting major, you’ll learn a lot of skills, technical and otherwise. After graduating with your accounting degree, you’ll be comfortable navigating financial reporting, budgeting, auditing, tax preparation, spreadsheet analysis, and different accounting softwares. Much of the coursework prioritizes familiarizing students with common tasks and tools of the trade.
Accounting majors also prepare students for the soft skills needed to succeed as an accountant. A bachelor’s degree in accounting will train you in analytical thinking, problem solving, and how to pay attention to every detail. After all, as an accountant, a single misplaced decimal can bring down a Fortune 500 company. Another crucial part of accounting is communication: it’s on you to communicate the findings of your audits or analyses to companies. Because accountants spend a lot of time explaining their work to non-accountants, accounting majors also teach written and verbal communication skills.
You’ll practice all these skills through hands-on work like case studies, financial statement analysis, and budgeting projects. As an accounting major, you’ll make presentations like the ones that you would make for a company. Plus, you’ll likely get to intern during your time as an accounting major to practice using your skills in a real-world environment.
If you finish your accounting major and decide that you don’t actually want to pursue accounting, that’s totally fine. These skills are all valuable in other business settings. Beyond accounting, students who have learned these things are attractive to employers for roles in finance, operations, consulting, and business analytics.
Is accounting a business major?
Short answer: Yes. Accounting is one of the most common business majors, and it usually lives within a college’s business school. You’ll study and likely share classes with finance majors, marketing majors, economics majors, and business management majors. Many students studying under the broad business umbrella, including accounting majors, will take the same introductory courses to learn fundamental principles.
For example, at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, a bachelor’s degree in accounting has core courses before more specialized accounting classes. Accounting majors take classes in business law, public speaking, marketing, economics, finance, and calculus to cover the basics. Those core classes serve them plus people studying finance, marketing, and more specialized options like supply chain management and information systems.
So what makes an accounting major different from these other options? Accounting majors focus more heavily on financial reporting, regulations, auditing, taxation, and data accuracy than other courses of study. Marketing, which may be more appealing for someone looking to merge a flair for the creative with their business savvy. Finance, on the other hand, may appeal to someone looking to highlight strategy in their everyday career. Compared to those, accounting is a more technical and organizational track in the world of business majors.
At some schools, you can layer a business accounting concentration on top of a general business major. This is a nice option if you’re not quite on board for a bachelor’s degree but want the technical foundation for career prospects. When you’re researching schools, look at the options for how business accounting fits into the broader business school at the university. You may find an academic path that’s perfect for you.
Finance vs. Accounting Major
Ok, let’s get down to the nitty gritty. If you’re into business, and you’re into numbers, what’s the difference between accounting vs. finance?
Though accounting and finance may appeal to people for similar reasons, they’re actually pretty different disciplines. Accounting emphasizes recording, reporting, and analyzing financial information, while finance majors focus on investing, managing money, financial strategy, and capital markets.
After introductory classes, the coursework diverges and becomes more specialized. First, both accounting majors and finance majors will take courses like economics, statistics, and business law. Accounting majors will go on to dive deeper into accounting courses like tax law, auditing standards, and financial reporting rules. Finance majors, meanwhile, will spend more time on investment analysis, corporate finance strategy, and financial modeling.
Career paths also generally reflect that split. Accounting majors often become accountants, auditors, tax professionals, or forensic accountants. In contrast, finance majors become financial analysts, investment bankers, financial planners, and portfolio managers.
So what does all that mean? Accountants work to make sure that every single number is in its place so that companies can keep clean books. Based on the numbers, the company can then decide what to do with their perfectly tracked funds. Those strategic decisions about a company’s future and where money needs to be? Planning those is the job of a finance major.
If you’re still not sure about accounting vs. finance, don’t worry. Most students get to decide which major they’d like to pursue during their freshman year of college. In the meantime, you can try out different introductory courses to settle the accounting vs. finance debate. You have time to figure it out.
Is accounting a hard major?
Accounting majors have a reputation for being challenging, and that’s somewhat true. And it’s not because you need to learn any advanced math; most of the calculations involved in accounting are pretty straightforward. Rather, accounting majors have to learn an entirely new framework for thinking through financial information. They don’t just memorize formulas or grind through equations.
Accounting is often described as being closer to law than math. Much of the coursework focuses on correctly applying accounting standards, tax regulations, and reporting rules to specific and messy real-world situations. Knowing which rule applies in a given scenario is usually more important than actually performing the calculation once you know the rule.
If you’ve ever done your taxes, you’ve had some exposure to this. What number goes where? How do you estimate expenses correctly? What do all of these letters and numbers and boxes mean? None of those are purely mathematical questions. Having someone who knows the rules in and out, like an accountant, can help you answer them.
For many accounting majors, things start to get real when you hit intermediate accounting. It’s often described as the biggest jump in difficulty, since it introduces more complex reporting standards and deeper financial analysis. To succeed, you need strong attention to detail, solid logical reasoning, persistence, and a willingness to practice applying concepts repeatedly rather than just memorizing them.
Accounting Major: Courses, Requirements, and Certifications
A typical bachelor’s degree in accounting follows the same basic structure as most bachelor’s degrees: core classes (in this case, for business), general education requirements, and then upper-level accounting coursework that becomes more specialized as you go. Most accounting degree programs take four years, though some schools offer combined bachelor’s-to-master’s tracks that let you knock out the extra credits needed for a CPA license along the way.
Courses
Some of the most common accounting courses you’ll take as part of an accounting degree include Financial Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Intermediate Accounting, Auditing, Taxation, and Accounting Information Systems. All of these accounting courses are found at nearly every accounting degree program, and each one builds on the knowledge of the last. Many accounting programs also require courses in business statistics, business law, and information systems — accounting programs like to make sure you understand the broader business context, not just how to work with the numbers themselves. Some accounting programs also offer elective accounting courses in areas like forensic accounting, international accounting, or nonprofit accounting, so always check out each college’s accounting degree program page to see which specific courses that school offers.
Internships
Many accounting programs also encourage (or require) internships, which give you real-world experience before you graduate. These matter a lot, since firms often hire directly from their intern pool. Accounting degree programs emphasize the application of accounting principles to practical situations, because that’s what accounting is all about, so you’ll be well-prepared to enter the workforce by the time you graduate.
Certifications
When it comes to further certifications after you finish your bachelor’s degree in accounting, the big one is the Certified Public Accountant, or CPA. Some accounting careers require CPAs, and are looking for a higher level of accounting education than simply a bachelor’s degree in accounting. A CPA requires more hours of credits than a bachelor’s degree in accounting provides, so some accounting programs offer tied-in master’s degrees to help students meet the requirement. Once you’ve done your extra credits, you have to acquire a certain amount of industry experience beyond an accounting degree program, and then you take the CPA exam. If you pass, you can then apply for a state CPA license.
12 Best Schools for Accounting
The best schools for accounting are located all across the country, and offer a mix of college experiences. Some offer different accounting programs and options for your bachelor’s degree in accounting, and many are within business schools at large universities. Here’s a list of the top 12 best schools for accounting:
12 Top Schools for Accounting
1. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Located in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, UIUC is number one on the list of the best schools for accounting. It’s a large public university with more than 35,000 undergraduates. UIUC’s Gies College of Business is consistently ranked among the top accounting schools in the country. The size of the accounting degree program means decades-long recruiting relationships with major accounting firms. Graduates of its bachelor’s degree in accounting have a leg up when it comes to job opportunities.
2. The University of Texas – Austin
Located in Austin, Texas, UT is another large public university with over 40,000 students. UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business is known for its highly competitive accounting degree program. It’s renowned for its excellent CPA exam pass rates among graduates, making it one of the top accounting schools.
3. Brigham Young University
Another business school within a large research university, BYU’s Marriott School of Business regularly lands near the top in rankings of accounting programs. Its students have ranked at the highest percentage for CPA exam pass rates, making BYU one of the best schools for accounting.
4. Indiana University – Bloomington
At IU’s Bloomington campus, students at the accounting program attend the Kelley School of Business. The Kelly School has a longstanding reputation as one of the top accounting programs. There’s solid career guidance and resources that offer students a path to recruitment after graduation.
5. University of Pennsylvania
UPenn is an Ivy League school and a significantly smaller school than many others on our list, with only 10,000 students. It’s home to a renowned business school, the Wharton School of Business. Wharton’s accounting degree program combines rigorous technical training with the broader resources of an Ivy. It’s one of the top accounting schools as well as one of the top business schools in the US.
6. University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
At UMich, a large school with over 30,000 students, the Ross School of Business offers accounting programs boasting a strong alumni network.
7. University of Southern California
Want to do accounting for an entertainment company? Consider USC, located in Los Angeles, a private school with around 21,000 undergraduates. Plus, USC’s Leventhal School of Accounting is one of the only standalone accounting schools in the US.
8. Boston College
Funnily enough, BC is not located in Boston, but in a suburb right outside of the city. It’s a midsized private school with fewer than 10,000 students. Its Carroll School of Management has “uncommonly high” rates of seniors that go straight from BC’s accounting programs to accounting firms. They’re especially popular at the Big 4 firms: Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Ernst & Young, and KPMG.
9. University of Florida
Next on the list of top accounting schools, UF is a large public university with more than 35,000 undergraduates. UF’s Fisher School of Accounting offers an accounting degree program that’s the best in the state.
10. University of Notre Dame
At Notre Dame in Indiana, students can attend the accounting program at the Mendoza College of Business. The bachelor’s in accounting offers a highly-ranked accounting major with strong outcomes for CPA licensure.
11. New York University
If you want a New York City college experience, NYU is one of the best places to do it. And what’s more, it’s got one of the top accounting schools in the US at NYU Stern, NYU’s business school. Students at Stern have the benefit of studying in the financial capital of the world — not too shabby for a business graduate.
12. The Ohio State University
Last on our list of top accounting schools, Ohio State is one of the nation’s largest public universities, with more than 45,000 undergraduates. Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business offers a large, well-resourced accounting program with strong recruiting programs both regionally and across the US.
Accounting Major Salary and Career Outlook
Now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the money. (You are future accounting majors, after all.) According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for accountants and auditors was $81,680 as of May 2024. Furthermore, employment in the field is projected to grow about 5% from 2024 to 2034. That’s a pretty good outlook for anyone considering a bachelor’s degree in accounting.
Admittedly, accounting isn’t at the top of the list of highest paying majors. However, its stability and projected growth makes it a strong choice in an unstable market. Plus, with an accounting degree, you’ve got a lot of career paths to choose from.
You could be a public accountant, corporate accountant, auditor, tax accountant, forensic accountant, government accountant, budget analyst, and financial manager. Some of these roles push accounting toward one of the highest paying majors once you factor in bonuses, certifications, and years of experience. Accounting also tends to show up on lists of highest paying majors because the skills are so relevant and transferable. Remember, not every accounting major becomes an accountant.
Indeed, something like a CPA certification can significantly expand your options, and open doors to higher-paying roles and leadership opportunities. You can also look into factors that influence pay like location, job title, and industry. These considerations can help you to decide what career path to pursue after graduating with your accounting degree.
How to Decide if an Accounting Major Is Right for You
So how do you know if an accounting major is right for you? First, reflect on your interests. In accounting, it’s pretty crucial that you enjoy working with numbers, thrive in detail-oriented situations, and love to organize things. If you do not like these things, being an accountant will probably exhaust you.
There are lots of low-stakes ways to test out an accounting major before committing. You could take business or accounting classes in high school, if your school offers them, or join business-related clubs. If you or your parents know anyone who’s an accountant, shadow them for a day if possible. At the very least, give them a call and chat with them about what their job is like. You can also talk to accounting professors at nearby colleges to get a feel for what the coursework is like.
Additionally, make sure you think about your career goals, preferred work environments, and long-term interests. It can help to compare accounting with related majors like finance, economics, or a general business major. Then you can better see which ones match your strengths, and which ones you enjoy the most. For example, an economics major tends to be more theoretical and less career-specific than an accounting major. If you want a clear-cut path to a job, accounting might be a better choice.
Accounting Major – Key Takeaways
Ultimately, accounting majors offer something that not every major can: real stability and a path to a well-paying career. The coursework is rigorous, and you need fine attention to detail, but the payoff is a degree that employers actually want. Which is, unfortunately, rarer than we would like it to be these days.
If you like numbers, enjoy solving problems, and aren’t scared off by the CPA exam, consider the accounting major. But if you can’t choose between an economics major, an accounting major, a finance major, or just a general business major, don’t worry. You can always try out different courses within a business program and go from there. You don’t have to decide right now!
Wherever you are in the college application process, CollegeAdvisor is here to help. We’ve got loads of free guides like this one. We also offer specialized one-on-one advising to help students punch up their applications for specialized majors like accounting.
This article was written by Rachel Kahn. Looking for more admissions support? Click here to schedule a free meeting with one of our Admissions Specialists. During your meeting, our team will discuss your profile and help you find targeted ways to increase your admissions odds at top schools. We’ll also answer any questions and discuss how CollegeAdvisor.com can support you in the college application process.
