Accountancy qualifications - anyone else studying one?

the-nugster

Parker46 wrote: »

My son has shown an interest in accountancy, what A Level qualifications, or any other qualifications did you need to get into university or onto the course??

Regards

I personally wouldn't bother with Uni, particularly for accountancy. You won;t be guaranteed a job straight away when you finish. I did it at A Level and went straight into work as a trainee accountant studying AAT. 2 and a half years later I'm still working, have loads of experience of different functions and I am almost qualified, I think experience in the workplace is vital to get anywhere in accountancy, and that is something you can;t get at uni!

chewmylegoff

Parker46 wrote: »

My son has shown an interest in accountancy, what A Level qualifications, or any other qualifications did you need to get into university or onto the course??

Regards

the best route in my opinion is to get on a graduate training contract scheme at a top 20 accountancy firm, studying for ACA or ACCA. you study at college and take exams every so often, whilst training on the job at the same time.

you don't need to do accountancy at university, but you do need a 2.1 from a good uni to even be considered. at my firm there were 20 or so trainees taken on each year - only one or two had accountancy degrees and it really didn't give them any particular advantage except for the first couple of weeks in college.

personally i wouldn't choose to go down the AAT route unless uni is not an option. i do a lot of CV sifting at work, and we're instructed to sift out people with AAT/ACA and no degree unless they have very strong work experience. plus from the peer group i trained with the degree educated people have done much better in their careers than the AAT/ACAs.

NiceGuyEddie_2

chewmylegoff wrote: »

personally i wouldn't choose to go down the AAT route unless uni is not an option. i do a lot of CV sifting at work, and we're instructed to sift out people with AAT/ACA and no degree unless they have very strong work experience. plus from the peer group i trained with the degree educated people have done much better in their careers than the AAT/ACAs.

It's interesting how things vary, isn't it? On a regional basis in my firm, those who do AAT/ACA do better in their careers than our graduates. I don't yet know how that compares to the NW region, which is the only comparable region in terms of having enough of each type of employee to make any vaguely reliable distinction.

chewmylegoff

NiceGuyEddie wrote: »

It's interesting how things vary, isn't it? On a regional basis in my firm, those who do AAT/ACA do better in their careers than our graduates. I don't yet know how that compares to the NW region, which is the only comparable region in terms of having enough of each type of employee to make any vaguely reliable distinction.

well, just my anecdotal experience, and suppose my comparison is unfair as the graduate intake and a-level intake who did AAT weren't really of similar calibre. the graduate intake had hundreds of applicants for 20 places, (even more once anderson exploded - after that happened most of the successful applicants were oxbridge), whereas the firm really struggled to find suitable candidates to fill its AAT vacancies each year, so probably inevitable that the grads would do better.

yorkshire_laura

chewmylegoff wrote: »

personally i wouldn't choose to go down the AAT route unless uni is not an option. i do a lot of CV sifting at work, and we're instructed to sift out people with AAT/ACA and no degree unless they have very strong work experience. plus from the peer group i trained with the degree educated people have done much better in their careers than the AAT/ACAs.

i personally think aat is a great qualification. it gave me a lot of background knowledge for acca and there were people at college doing acca who had degrees and it was a wonder how they had got degrees as they couldn't grasp some simple concepts!

3plus1

Whether you take the school leaver's route or the post uni route, you'll eventually end up in the same place, on a level playing field.

However, if you do AAT/ATT or similar straight out of school, you're closing a lot of doors. How many 18-year-olds are sure that they want to be an accountant and nothing else?

The advantage of doing a degree is not that it makes you a better accountant, but that it opens the door to join a whole bunch of non degree specific graduate trainee programmes. You don't need an accountancy degree to be an accountant and you don't have to be an accountant if you have an accountancy degree.

That said, in this economic climate, I would give school leaver routes a lot of consideration. It certainly won't suit all people, but for some, it's a good way to save a lot of money... Student debt is just ridiculous these days.

NEH

I was looking at accountancy for the far future, too ill to do anything now but wanted to get an idea if it is something to get into...

My sister is a Manangement Accountant and she says to this day having her degree doesn't count for much in the world of accountancy and that it is the practical/vocational side of things that helps...

kalps

I am doing cima, got the result last month. Passed one and failed one. Still got one more paper in strategic level and then top cima. Cant wait to finish it off.

little_derek

Sorry to dig up an old thread, I've had no luck googling the number of hours study it takes per exam.

The thing is ive just passed the entry level exams for Cima and now have to book some exam(s) for May (Operational level F1, P1 etc), I have about 70 days till the exams and work full time and need to decide before the deadline on Monday how many exams to take on, can anyone estimate how many hours study they did? I hear BPP recommend 200 hours but that sounds like a phenomenal amount of hours and probably too cautious, what's the real figure???

Any

little_derek wrote: »

Sorry to dig up an old thread, I've had no luck googling the number of hours study it takes per exam.

The thing is ive just passed the entry level exams for Cima and now have to book some exam(s) for May (Operational level F1, P1 etc), I have about 70 days till the exams and work full time and need to decide before the deadline on Monday how many exams to take on, can anyone estimate how many hours study they did? I hear BPP recommend 200 hours but that sounds like a phenomenal amount of hours and probably too cautious, what's the real figure???

Surely that much depends on your actual knowledge you already have and also how easily you learn. I find that once I go to college I remember loads from the lectures and just keep doing examples at home. Practicing and practicing.
However if I did homestudy i would have to do probably hundreds of hours of actual learning before even being able to do examples.
(I also work full time, I go to college at the weekends.)