I got my BA in Psych and took some classes towards an MA in General Psych. Now I want to be an Accountant...?

Question

I work in sales, and I am growing tired of it. If I were to go to school to become an accountant would any of my past classes count? I got my BA in 1994, and went to grad school part-time in 1995-1996. Will I have to start at the bottom?

Answer 1

Depends.  Since you have a bachelors degree, you could apply for a second bachelors degree.  Depending on the school, they will waive many of the general core classes such that you don't need to repeat core classes such as english, history, social sciences, etc.  However, you would be responsible for any of the business major prereqs and this may include math levels you have not taken.  Schools have explicit policies about earning a second bachelors degree so look into that.  Many of the state schools have some restrictions, such as only accepting students on a space available basis in the program.

And of course, you'll need to take accounting courses.  Acct is very sequential so you'll need to start at the bottom, with 2 semesters of accounting intro courses (financial in the 1st, and managerial in the 2nd semester).  You then move on to take intermediate accounting courses, which takes about 1.5 to 2 years to complete the sequence.  Accounting is a business major so your program will also consist of taking courses in other functional areas, such as finance, IT, marketing, HR, etc.  

You can also look into a masters program.  Don't choose an MBA, as you will not have sufficient coursework in accounting available to call yourself an accountant.  There are masters of accounting programs, but for people who haven't been exposed to accounting as an undergrad major, you'll need to take all the undergrad accounting courses first before you are even eligible to sit for graduate level accounting courses.