Some CPA questions....

[burkoboy]

1)Say it takes 5 years to get your accounting degree, how long can you expect it to take you to pass the CPA exam?

2) You pass your CPA exam, don't you THEN need to work for 2 years before you can practice on your own?

3) How much can you expect to make being a CPA per year? (I know there is a lot of factors, but can I expect to make 100k+? given that I am a hard worker?

4) How does crossing state lines work? Let's say I finish school in Ohio, get my CPA license in Ohio, but want to relocate to california or florida to actually work.... do I have to retake another exam? How does it work?

[thing85]

I can't answer everything for you because I'm not very experienced yet, so take this FWIW:

1) Assuming you're in a regular semester schedule, you can pass the CPA exam the summer immediately following the end of your 5th year. As for literally how long the CPA exam takes:

Time Breakdowns for New CPA Exam

Section Hours
Exam (total) 14
Auditing & Attestation 4.5
Financial Accounting & Reporting 4
Regulation 3
Business Environment & Concepts 2.5

2) I'm not sure without looking this up. I'm in public accounting at a Big 4 firm, FWIW.

3) Depends on where you live - where I am, the starting salary in public accounting (tax) is around 55-60k. I'm sure you can do better in other areas of accounting, but you also have to consider your potential for advancement, etc. Also, everyone is a "hard worker," so that likely won't affect the answer to your question.

4) No idea, sorry.

Hopefully someone else can chime in and add to/correct my answers.

[broiler]

Most of your questions are highly dependent upon where you end up working and the regulations in that state. I will answer everything based on my experience as a mostly tax CPA in a dead/dying city of NY.

1) Passsing the exam really depends on how well you remember details. The questions are fairly repetitive from old exams, so you can do yourself a big favor in finding a book of old exam questions. Many people are able to pass the sections in one or two tries.

2) Each state has different requirements for work experience in order to get licensed. In NY, a 5 year student (that took the proper classes) only needs 1 year of experience for a license. The normal time in NY is 2 years since we do not have a 5 year requirement in order to sit for the exam. There was a thread about a month ago where someone stated that TX has no experience requirement.

3) The amount of money that one can make as a CPA is completely location dependent. $100k where I live is senior manager money at the big 4 and large local firms. The partner opportunities in my city are very limited at the big 4, which makes $100k extremely high end for a CPA in public practice. If you want to make $100k here, you need to go to a fairly high position in private industry.

4) Crossing state lines depends on the rules in your new state. Most states allow for your license to be good in their state as long as you meet all of their rules to keep your license. However, moving into a new state with only the exam passed can cause a problem. NY wants to get your old exams to confirm that you would have passed those sections with the curve that NY would have applied to your raw score. I know of one case where a former coworker was forced to retake a section because her 75 in IN did not equal a 75 in NY for that section.

[thing85]

Shed some light on how long it takes a person to even make senior manager - couldn't it be as long as 8-10 years (or maybe more)?

[broiler]

In my area, getting to senior manager is a very long process. Two of the big 4 offices here don't have any partners and are effectively run by the office in Pittsburgh. The lack of partner opportunities pushes down on the chain of command and forces people out of public in order to find better opportunities elsewhere.

The youngest senior manager (that I know of) around here graduated 10 years ago and was promoted to senior manager in January. A former coworker that was promoted at the same time took 12 years to get to senior manager. There are good friends of mine that are still managers after 12-15 years because most firms here are not big enough to promote unless a spot opens up at a level above. Senior manager positions are spots that firms like to fill from within so moving to another firm is rarely an option, unless you have inside information on partner/ senior manager retirements that are likely in the near future. I left the firm that I started with after college because I was blocked at the senior tax level by all of the tax managers who were waiting for a senior tax manager spot to open. 3 years later a spot finally opened at that firm to allow a little bit of movement in the tax department.

[WLVRYN]

I made senior manager in 6 years at Big 4 firm (KPMG), but that was not the normal path. I only spent two years as a senior due to my internship experience (I had two), my superstar performance, and mostly due to the fact that our office had been decimated by turnover at the manager level. The typical path at KPMG is staff for the first two years, senior for the next 3, manager for the next two, then senior manager (total of 7 years). I think that PWC adds an extra year in the process (going from senior to manager), and I'm not sure about EY or D&T.