Fastest way to complete BA/BS in Accounting

[Fayepie79]

I changed careers last year and am looking for the fastest way possible to complete my undergrad degree. I am 44 with 12 credits obtained at a community college and 24 credits obtained at ITT Tech but they are unfortunately closed and not sure if those will transfer. Any suggestions?

[bjcheung77]

@Fayepie79, Welcome to the board, that's too compact and concise of an intro post, it doesn't provide enough information that is asked for in the addendum and template within the sticky thread above your post. By providing an overall picture of your scenario, we can further assist you better with the extra details, please reply back and complete the addendum and template here: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...Area-works

[Fayepie79]

Your Location: Nevada, United States 
Your Age: 44
What kind of degree do you want? Accounting, CPA path
Current Regional Accredited Credits: 12 Total Credits: 12
ACCT 101 Intro to Accounting, 3, B

Google University Total Credits: 0


Any certifications or military experience? Bookkeeping and QuickBooks

[Fayepie79]

Location: Las Vegas NV 

Age: 44

Budget: under $5,000

Timeframe: 8 months or sooner

RA credits: 15 Received from Norco Community College 

Acc-1 3

Com 1 3

Health 3

Humanities 3

Business Law 3

Type of Degree: BS in accounting CPA path

Study time: 10 hours per week

No CLEP, Sophia credit 

[bjcheung77]

It's great you're trying to get some assistance, but you're not providing any more detail (just bits and pieces, each time). Merging your thread again to bump up the thread, you might want to provide a little bit more details. Such as, if you've look at any of the institutions on this board that has its own sub forum... You main go to options are TESU/UMPI/WGU. I highly suggest you review previous posts, threads, and the WIKI for all three institutions and their respective websites for the BA programs.

[Fayepie79]

Las Vegas NV
44
BS/BA in Accounting
Current Regional Accredited Credits:18

Norco Community College Total Credits: 18
Class Name:
Acc-1 grade C credit 3
Com-1 grade A credit 3
Business Law grade A credit 3
Health grade A credit 3
Political Science grade B credit 3
Humanities grade B credit 3,

No Current ACE, CLEP, or NCCRS Credits
Budget: $5-8k
Timeframe: 8 months



Any certifications or military experience? Legal Administration Certification and Bookkeeping certification

[inor]

Ok, so to start, I'm looking at Nevada's CPA requirements since you want to get on the CPA path. You will need:

- Bachelor's degree
- 150 credits in total
- 24 semester credits in accounting "above the introductory level" (that's a bit vague, but whatever, we'll assume that only applies to intro I/II or intro the financial and intro to managerial)
- 6 of those 24 credits must be in financial accounting (basically Intermediate I & II), 3 in cost, 3 in auditing, 3 in tax, 9 in electives
- Since introductory level courses don't count and most upper-level classes have introductory prereqs, we'll assume you need 30 credits (incl. 6 intro credits)
- 3 credits in business law
- 24 credits in non-accounting business courses (finance, economics, ethics, marketing, management, statistics, etc.)

Before going any further, I'm going to give my two cents here regarding ACE credits. Out of curiosity, I have tried to do a little research on which states mention on their state accountancy board websites that they accept ACE credits as fulfilling CPA education requirements. I found very few encouraging results. CLEP seems to be an acceptable option in some states, but to be on the safe side, I would recommend avoiding ACE credits (i.e. Sophia, Study.com, etc.). If anybody has evidence to the contrary, particularly with regards to Nevada, please set the record straight! I'd like to be wrong about this. But assuming accountancy boards are as strict as I think they are, you should plan on taking 150 RA credits, 30 of which are in accounting, and 24 of which are in business.

The quickest and cheapest way to get that many RA credits is, I imagine, WGU. Unfortunately I have not looked into them in any detail, so I don't know for a fact that they fulfill all of the above mentioned Nevada CPA requirements, but I'd be surprised if they didn't. That is a pretty standard accounting and business curriculum. I have read that some motivated students can finish degrees there extremely quickly, so if that sounds like you, it might be a good choice.

I can't think of any option that would be cheaper or quicker that doesn't require ACE credits, and like I said, personally if I were in your shoes I would avoid ACE. The only way I would justify ACE credits would be if I just wanted to get the degree ASAP so I could get my foot in the door for an accounting job and then take business/accounting classes after graduation in order to fulfill my state's CPA requirements. But in the long run you're just spending more money by doing that since you'll be duplicating a lot of your classes.

So yeah, tl;dr: probably WGU is going to be the fastest way to get from your current 18 credits to 150 RA credits.

...of course, before making such a big decision, I would suggest getting in contact with Nevada's accountancy board and asking them directly what their policy on ACE credits are (and CLEP, while you're at it). I'm not sure how many credits you can get from CLEP, but if it turns out that you can use CLEP for a CPA license in Nevada and you can fulfill the GenEd requirements via CLEP for a school like UMPI, I'd probably recommend that over WGU.

[bjcheung77]

Another option is to do the UMPI BA Accounting (30 credits in Accounting) vs UMPI BABA Accounting or TESU BSBA (24 credits in BABA/BSBA Accounting), then ladder to the WGU MS Accounting. Having said that, a One-and-Done option is going for the WGU BS Accounting and WGU MS Accounting afterwards... It really depends on your trifecta of cost, ease, speed, it's up to you to decipher that...

[inor]

By the way, I do realize you said you wanted this done in 8 months or less. That might be possible with lots of ACE credits, but probably practically impossible without them. However, if this person is to be believed, they were able you finish a whopping 88 credits in one term.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU/comments/15..._thoughts/

You need quite a few more than that, but if you're willing to be flexible about that 8 month goal, perhaps you could take 2 semesters to do a BS and one to do an MS. Based on some quick googling, that seems very possible with WGU.

[HogwartsSchool]

Go with UMPI / BA Accounting. However, many people in the accounting field are leaving the industry. Do you have a specialty in mind within the accounting industry? If not, highly recommend one. btw: 2024, the CPA exam was updated.