UMPI Bachelors of Accounting - Just Finished. My Story

[SaigonDragon]

Hello Everyone,

I decided I would make a post here when I finished my degree since this forum has been such a huge help to me when I first started out. And motivation to completion during the tough times when you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I live in SEA so I don't have a big salary or even an average salary compared to what we make in the U.S. This allowed me to get financial aid which paid for all of my UMPI courses and allowed me access to some small government student loans which saved me during the pandemic since I wasn't able to work or bring home any income. 

I started attending UMPI in Jan 2021 and I have just completed my last class in April 2023.

I typically only finished the minimum amount of classes each semester to keep my financial aid. I was able to take some time over the past 3 months to completely focus on school and I was able to complete 10 classes in two semesters to push for graduation.


I switched Majors halfway through from a BA focus on project management to accounting. 

The reason for this switch was that I really don't think the education you get with the project management course was going to open up doors to a project management position if I wanted to do that. After some research, it seems that project managers are often experienced in a specific field and the position of project management is a growth path for that individual's career. Rather than companies hiring someone with a degree in project management. 

I am extremely happy I made the switch and I feel it was the smart move. I believe the accounting degree can open some doors for me quickly if I ever needed to move back to the U.S. and get a job.


For the degree, I completed over 30 classes with UMPI through Yourpace and I had some previous college experience that transferred in for a few classes. I didn't use any of the options like Sophia or study.com and all of my UMPI courses were completely covered by financial aid.

I wanted to give my experience on some of the courses that I believe I was worried about based on some information here. I don't remember many of the specific course names so I'll just speak generally:


The science classes - They are long, but one of them (bio101?) gives you 4 credits. But to be fair, they didn't send me the owl pellet since I live overseas and I just did that part online. The other science course felt frustrating with so much focus on chemistry but at the end of the day, I passed that multi-choice exam with a 90% and I didn't really spend too much time mastering the specifics for the chemistry portion. 

Fre101 - I was dreading this class based on what I read. Fear not, I completed this class in 4-5 days and I haven't studied French since High School back in 2004. Just have an open mind and do your best to pronounce the vocabulary the best you can as you are learning it.

Eng121 - This might have been my most frustrating course because I felt like an agenda was being pushed on me the entire time. I just swallowed it and wrote what they wanted. 

Accounting-specific courses - Can be challenging and take a bit of time. I thought the professor was pretty easy going and the most challenging course you will take for the entire degree is Governmental & not-for-profit BUS 466. I know there are some posts here that recommend checking out Professor Farhat on Youtube. My piece of advice, the most challenging part of the course is ch.17 and I think the YT channel "accounting instruction, help, & how to" was extremely helpful. It's really hard to organize all of the information in two of the problems for this course and I believe this YT channel can show you the way to keep yourself organized with all of your entries and balance them all out. I would even say checking this channel out if you are having any issues with understanding how to complete your accounting problems for any of the accounting courses.

Business Analytics and Business Policy and Strategy - I believe people were saying that Professor Winslow is difficult. I didn't have any issues really except on my final I accidentally removed a required gov't citation. He almost failed me for it, but he didn't because he had seen it on my draft. I do believe he only gave me a B- at the end of the day for the course, which is fair enough. It wasn't the best project I have submitted during my time in school, so it is what it is. 

To finish up, I again wanted to say thank you to everyone that provides useful information in this forum. It keeps those of us who are just lurkers motivated to complete what we started. It's been a long and challenging process to get my degree through a worldwide pandemic but I am really glad that I finished. Good luck to anyone else out there just starting their journey!

[joshua27]

Congratulations! I sincerely wish you the best as you venture out in the career world with your accounting degree. It is such a universally sought after and strong degree that you should have no issues utilizing it. I hope to be finishing my last 2 classes by the end of the month myself.

[durain]

How about the assessment for  taxation 1 and 2? Please shared your view on these two courses.

[SaigonDragon]

How about the assessment for  taxation 1 and 2? Please shared your view on these two courses.

They are both challenging classes and you’ll need to pass the VITA. Which is pretty cool actually, you could go and volunteer to help those in need with their taxes at a centre if you wished to do so after getting the certificate. 

My advice, do the best you can on the forms you’ll have to complete… so many forms @.@ It will be a bit daunting and a lot of back and forth between the government issued guidelines and the forms. But I’m pretty sure I was WAY OFF on the results I got for the 1040 and the 1120s I submitted. I wouldn’t sweat trying to memorise any of the tax code but rather be familiar with the situation and where in the book(I don’t remember the name of the IRS Book that you download which is most useful and has the information you need) you’ll be able to locate the correct information based on the entry you are trying to fill out. 

I just believe the professor wants to see that you understood most of the concepts and the process of filling out these forms. I think actually doing it correctly your first time around is probably very unlikely. 

In general, I believe that is most of the expectations for your assignments for this entire degree. It would be quite challenging for us to successfully nail most of these challenging problems in accounting with such little hands on experience so they just want to see that you understood the basic concepts and put forth the effort. 

I hope that helps, it wouldn’t be an easy set of courses to rush through, I took 8 weeks to complete both but its doable and feels pretty rewarding after you’ve accomplished it.

Best of luck!

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Congratulations!  I sincerely wish you the best as you venture out in the career world with your accounting degree.  It is such a universally sought after and strong degree that you should have no issues utilizing it.  I hope to be finishing my last 2 classes by the end of the month myself.

Thanks very much! I think you are right about the degree as well. I hope you are able to get those last two classes knocked out and graduate with me this May! Best of Luck!

[bjcheung77]

@SaigonDragon, Great job! Congrats on finishing! It really doesn't matter when you started and what major you were looking at earlier, the main thing is, you finished and selected a different major that was more geared for yourself! Nicely done!