Classes That Can Advance Your Accounting Degree

The educational requirements for becoming a CPA in the state of Georgia require you to hold a bachelor’s degree or higher with a minimum of 150 credit hours, 30 of which need to be in upper-level accounting, and an additional 24 need to be in business related subjects. Your school will require certain courses for the accounting degree, and you will most likely have some options as to which business electives you choose. However, that leaves a lot of room for decisions on what classes you could and should be taking. How do you decide which classes are the right ones?

To help you on your class-selection journey, we surveyed our staff to see what classes they felt were the most useful for them. Here is what some of them had to say:

“Since I took the 150-hour undergrad approach at Georgia Tech, pursuing a certificate in the business school was helpful in accomplishing the total hour goals. Specifically, I obtained a business law certificate that required 12 additional hours of law/governance classes after the core business electives for law were taken (Legal Aspects of Business and International Business). Other business electives I took depended on my personal interests. I took a few extra marketing classes since that was the opposite of my interests just to expand my knowledge base.” – Andrew Hedrich, Tax Group

“I took several law courses at Georgia Tech that helped me become more familiar with terminology found on the CPA exam and that is used in everyday practice. I also took an Excel course, and while it did not count toward my degree, it did help me to become more efficient in Excel. I still use the materials as a reference.” – Eleanor Byers, Tax Group

“The IT classes that taught Excel were especially helpful, as we use Excel so heavily in our daily work. I also think that taking a few tax classes is important even if you are going into audit, because whether you like tax or not, you have to understand the basics. Additionally, the basic communications class helped me with public speaking, as well as how to speak with clients.” – Megan Chong, Assurance Group

“For my accounting degree, I believe Advanced Financial Accounting helped the most. It solidified many of the concepts taught during the first Financial Accounting course.” – Erica Gillespie, Accounting and Advisory Services Group

“The most beneficial elective I took was Enhancing Leadership Skills with Dr. Todd Maurer at Georgia State University (MGS 8420). It focused on learning how our leadership styles work with others, how we can use those to our benefit, and what we need to do to work with other leadership / work styles.

I had to take Organizational Behavior as part of my MBA. I’d recommend a course in managerial sciences / interpersonal skill development / person-environment fit, given that client-interaction is such a large part of our work.” – Beth Margedant, Accounting and Advisory Services Group