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Should I get a MBA, MS in accountancy, or something else?
I have seen some similar posts relating to this question, but I wanted to put my specific situation and receive feedback. First off I am a 24 year old female. I have a year of experience interning at an oil and gas E&P fortune 500 company. Right now I am currently interning at one of the big four accounting firms (in audit). I will be receiving an offer to start full time in Sept 2011 which I plan on accepting. I graduate with my bachelor's degree this May 2010. In order to fulfill the 150 hour requirement to sit for the CPA exam, I only need one more accounting course and 4 other courses of my choice (I have extra courses I took while obtaining my bachelor's degree). I wanted to cram the classes this summer and start full time Sept 2010, but determined after speaking to HR, that even though I am an extremely strong candidate and they are going to give me an offer, they have no spots available until Sept 2011. So the earliest start date I have available to me is Sept 2011. So what should I do? Should I push my start date back a year to Sept 2012 and obtain my MBA? Should I get my MS in Accountancy and start in Sept 2011? Should I get something else? So in order to answer these questions you need to know my long time career goals. So, I plan on staying at least 2 years at the firm, I would really like to stay for at least 5 years and make manager if I can handle all the hours. Who knows I may stay longer, I did enjoy my internship, it is just a lot of hours to work. So if I stay 5 years and leave I am not sure what I would do. I am pretty much open to anything. I just know I want to be really successful and in a position of power (with hopefully not as bad of hours as public accounting). Ideas are a CFO or maybe even a CEO. Or maybe something else I don’t know about. Not really sure what options will be available to me in the future as an accountant. I only went into accounting in the first place because I had no idea what I wanted to do and I am really good at accounting and it comes naturally to me. So what degree should I get? Also any other suggestions/feedback is greatly appreciated.
Should I get a MBA, MS in accountancy, or something else?
I have seen some similar posts relating to this question, but I wanted to put my specific situation and receive feedback. First off I am a 24 year old female. I have a year of experience interning at an oil and gas E&P fortune 500 company. Right now I am currently interning at one of the big four accounting firms (in audit). I will be receiving an offer to start full time in Sept 2011 which I plan on accepting. I graduate with my bachelor's degree this May 2010. In order to fulfill the 150 hour requirement to sit for the CPA exam, I only need one more accounting course and 4 other courses of my choice (I have extra courses I took while obtaining my bachelor's degree). I wanted to cram the classes this summer and start full time Sept 2010, but determined after speaking to HR, that even though I am an extremely strong candidate and they are going to give me an offer, they have no spots available until Sept 2011. So the earliest start date I have available to me is Sept 2011. So what should I do? Should I push my start date back a year to Sept 2012 and obtain my MBA? Should I get my MS in Accountancy and start in Sept 2011? Should I get something else? So in order to answer these questions you need to know my long time career goals. So, I plan on staying at least 2 years at the firm, I would really like to stay for at least 5 years and make manager if I can handle all the hours. Who knows I may stay longer, I did enjoy my internship, it is just a lot of hours to work. So if I stay 5 years and leave I am not sure what I would do. I am pretty much open to anything. I just know I want to be really successful and in a position of power (with hopefully not as bad of hours as public accounting). Ideas are a CFO or maybe even a CEO. Or maybe something else I don’t know about. Not really sure what options will be available to me in the future as an accountant. I only went into accounting in the first place because I had no idea what I wanted to do and I am really good at accounting and it comes naturally to me. So what degree should I get? Also any other suggestions/feedback is greatly appreciated.
Being an accountant is definatley the wrong function to get to a job as CEO. Sales and operations are much stronger feeders to the CEO chair.
An MBA straight out of college is a waste of time, in my opinion, especially if you plan on starting in public accounting. Starting Sept 2011 makes sense if you're interning right now--they've typically hired all their Sept 2010 starts already from the previous intern class.
It basically sounds like you only need a semester worth of classes to sit for the exam. You could do that, and basically spend 9 months studying/passing the CPA exam stress free. You could also get your Masters in Accounting, and spend the summer studying/passing the CPA exam. I've seen people go both ways--the first is much less stressful from a CPA studying standpoint.
Given that you have a nice window of opportunity to "stack on" the MS in accounting that is a pretty safe move, you might also want to think about broadening your education to include some higher level classes in strategy, marketing or other disciplines that have a wide application to many business pathes. I think there is a good deal of value in considering at least some course work certification in a range of business oriented paths including CFA, actuary, and even specialization in securities...
Frankly at this stage in your life it would be a HINDRANCE to your long term aspirations to attempt to earn an MBA. If you want to get into the kind of MBA program that would help you advance your career / have a realistic path to the executive suite you NEED to get experience in multiple areas of business AND MAKE some strong connections. That won't happen if you get an MBA now. Seriously. I know probably a dozen folks that earned MBAs "too soon", and they are certainly not starving to death, but they are on a separate tracks than the folks that timed things well. If you were to really stretch things out and head to law school you would probably be positioned than some one that would be too easy to get shoved into a purely technical aspect of financial / budgetary of the business world.
As others have said, with out experience in the operational side of business(es) you really will never make a good candidate for CEO. Even when comes to CFO if you are never part of the sort of team that can make strategic plans abouts acquisitions, spin-offs, stock moves and other areas that go way beyond the routine level of accounting you will probably plateau in some audit / budgetary managerial role. While some people would KILL to have this kind of job it is not particularly strategic.
BTW you really ought to plan on being somewhat nomadic, as among the folks that I DO KNOW that have been fortunate enough to move into the more strategic roles they have had to go "where the opportunity is when it opens up". That might mean living in the "deep south" to work for major grocery chain, then relocating to Minnesota when you get a shot a being part of a major discount retailer's push into groceries, then moving to West Coast when a national musical instruments retailer is looking for folks to capitalize on sales of kids weaned on video game based musical experiences to step up to real instruments. This is the true career path of a very good friend of mine. (I hope I did not put in too many details for anyone cyber stalkers... If you have aspirations to also have a family you will need to find the right kind of spouse too. The particular guy above is fortunate to have a wife that had a similar undergrad background, coupled with the well timed MBA, and was wise enough to see that in the big picture the total lifestyle that was in reach of their family was easier to pull off with only one spouse working in a traditional corporate environment; she has a more "portable" model of business that she is involved with.
Being an accountant is definatley the wrong function to get to a job as CEO. Sales and operations are much stronger feeders to the CEO chair.
I understand that it's not a typical career path, but I was saying as an ultimate long term goal it would be nice to be something like a CFO or CEO. I am not expecting that it will happen, just shooting for the moon. Depending on where I end up after public accounting experience I could possibly work my way up to one of those positions, right? I know Controller is more likely, but something else is still a possibility since there is never a set direct career path to anything.
Generally I think you should get an MBA over an MS in accounting, but an MBA right out of college is probably not great. That said, you can apply to Stanford, Wharton, and a couple other top 10 schools. SOMETIMES they will take people right out of undergrad and there has been a bit of a push in recent years to do more of that. If you can get into a really good MBA right out of school your career path will be perfectly fine due to the strength of your MBA. Don't go to a mediocre/lesser MBA program right out of undergrad. A mid ranked MBA is fine if you have work experience, but not right out of undergrad.
If you can't get into a top 10 MBA then I agree with others to stack the MS in accounting degree until your company has start dates available. Doing public accounting for 3 years then going back for an MBA is a pretty common career path for people. Sometimes you don't even need to get an MBA if you can make a transition to something else with your own networking ability/good luck/right timing.
And yes, if you want to be CFO/CEO of a relatively large organization you will pretty much need to devote your life to your career, move around, not have a life, not have kids or anything like that. Don't take this the wrong way, but the number of female senior executives that I have come across in large corporations (or even not that large ones) that have a family is really small. It is borderline unrealistic and insane to try to move up the corporate ladder (I mean move up to the degree that needs to happen to make CFO) and raise kids at the same time. Agree with chet that a similar background spouse is ideal - and someone with a portable/flexible type business or work.
CFO is probably more obtainable than CEO with an accounting background. I'm not extremely well networked to high level execs or anything, but the CFOs I do know started in public accounting. If you make manager in public accounting, the exit opportunities start getting pretty nice. It's difficult to plan too long term, because anything can happen, but working towards manager is a solid 5 year goal.
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Get some more experience in the field BEFORE going either way (in case you don't like acct). Let the company pay for your future degrees + OTJ training (each job should be training for our next position).
I feel an MBA course 'experience' is more valuable AFTER 10 + yrs in VARIOUS responsibilities. It is pretty broad and pretty shallow compared to Accounting, BUT can be a good strategic move. To be happy as a 'successful' CEO you need to be very creative, strategic, and have broad exposure to business; and be able to recognize AND UTILIZE those who can help your business succeed. (tho most CEO's only seek those who can help THEM succeed), Thus, age / experience also brings a depth of understanding / values shift to relinquish responsibility/ control w/o threat.
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