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This thread is probably gonna fail since I bet that there isn't a best answer, but is there a particular city where the accounting industry is particularly booming? Just thought I'd give it a shot, but $10 says it's gonna be NYC.
New York and Chicago seem to be the centers of accounting activity. Drawing in the most grads into one city from the Northeast and Midwest respectably. Those two cities have a pretty huge density of white-collar jobs like finance and accounting.
I guess I'd go with Chicago just because it's where I chose when deciding between the two. Mostly because the entry level pay in Chicago is fairly high given the cost of living.
Most grads are entering $45-50K or so. That's just for private though, I'm sure if you join KPMG, Deloitte, E&Y or PWC you're going to see higher entry pay - but much crappier hours. I'm up to around $80K a year after 5 years just doing your run-of-the-mill real estate accounting for one of a dozen firms in the loop. That lets me live very easily in the city.
When I applied for a new job in October of 2007 I put my resume on Monster.com as a starting point. I had 27 calls for interviews within 24 hours! Very overwhelming. I just went with the first three calls and had this job within a week. I'm so glad I got in before the economy went down though. I thank my lucky stars every day. Our company did just hire 11 more people though, so that's pretty optomistic.
New York and Chicago seem to be the centers of accounting activity. Drawing in the most grads into one city from the Northeast and Midwest respectably. Those two cities have a pretty huge density of white-collar jobs like finance and accounting.
I guess I'd go with Chicago just because it's where I chose when deciding between the two. Mostly because the entry level pay in Chicago is fairly high given the cost of living.
Most grads are entering $45-50K or so. That's just for private though, I'm sure if you join KPMG, Deloitte, E&Y or PWC you're going to see higher entry pay - but much crappier hours. I'm up to around $80K a year after 5 years just doing your run-of-the-mill real estate accounting for one of a dozen firms in the loop. That lets me live very easily in the city.
When I applied for a new job in October of 2007 I put my resume on Monster.com as a starting point. I had 27 calls for interviews within 24 hours! Very overwhelming. I just went with the first three calls and had this job within a week. I'm so glad I got in before the economy went down though. I thank my lucky stars every day. Our company did just hire 11 more people though, so that's pretty optomistic.
Bump for more opinions, just in case, and a couple more things:
1. To the guy that said Stamford, did you mean "Stanford" as in Stanford, CA? Wouldn't that fall under the Bay Area/Sillicon Valley region?
2. To all the accountants on here, would you mind if I PM you a quick question regarding the career path in private accounting?
Bump for more opinions, just in case, and a couple more things:
1. To the guy that said Stamford, did you mean "Stanford" as in Stanford, CA? Wouldn't that fall under the Bay Area/Sillicon Valley region?
2. To all the accountants on here, would you mind if I PM you a quick question regarding the career path in private accounting?
thanks
Stamford, CT. Which is part of the NY Metro so you can include it under that umbrella. The reason why it is a great place for accountants and many other careers is the overflow from companies in NYC and also many NY city based companies have relocated their corporate offices for tax purposes to Stamford. It is also a very high paying location for Accounting jobs.
As far as number 2 is concerned I do not mind sending a PM with any questions you may have.
As a CPA it was much easier to live and work in Chicago than NYC. The top cities in the nation for CPA-related work would be those two, I believe. But the salaries are actually the same, despite the vast and overwhelming difference in cost of living.
Would you rather live on $55,000 in Chicago or $55,00 in NYC?
Interestingly enough, when I moved back to Chicago my salary actually rose.
OK, I guess I'll ask my question here as well since so many accountants/CPAs are here or else I'll try PMing a couple of you (especially since we've all decided that Chicago is the best in terms of ease to live in):
I've heard that it's a really bad idea to go private first without starting in public. Have you guys found that to be true? Also, how much worse off would you be if you didn't work for a big 4, but worked for one of the smaller nationals (like BDO, Grant Thornton, etc.)? My goal is to be a financial controller (maybe CFO if I get lucky), so is that still possible from firms other than the Big 4? I had a bit of a rough start my first year (I started in pre-med and while I didn't do terribly, I finished with a 3.3 and had to drop econ once, however, I got an A in the BA 101 class and got an A- in econ the second time around), plus I had to transfer 2x (once it was because I was out of state and it was expensive esp since the economy was going down, the other time, I just hated the school and couldn't stand it), so I'm not sure how realistic the Big 4 is for my situation. I'm really worried about the transfer thing especially.
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