Deciding On an Accounting Career at an Early Stage

If you are in high school and have already decided on an accounting career, you might want to start right now acquiring training and experience. The first step, of course, is to find out if your school administers aptitude and achievement tests. If your school doesn't have any testing materials, they can be obtained by writing to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, 1211 6th Avenue, New York City. Also, your business-education teacher at school should be able to help you.

Testing is important. A lot of people decide on a career before they know if their abilities are appropriate. However, tests can only tell a certain amount; learn to trust your instincts about yourself.

In school, it is important to take courses in a number of areas. Here is a list of some basic courses that are important to take if you think you might want to go into accounting:

• Science
  
  
• Math
  
  
• History
  
  
• English
  
  
• Foreign languages
  
  
• Literature
  

Now these might not seem to be very integral in the workings of accounting. How many times, for example, will you have to do your figuring in French? But it can't be stressed enough how important it is to get a well-rounded education. Although some of the subjects may not relate directly to your work in an accounting firm, they do relate directly to your life. Even if, for example, you never get to France to exercise the language you learned in school, the act of learning a language will be beneficial to your intelligence; think of it, if nothing else, as an intellectual exercise. And of course, once again, accountants must have dealings with all kinds of people. You won't be discussing facts and figures all the time. It is important to know many things. Remember: expressing yourself in words is as important as expressing yourself in numbers when you are an accountant.

Of course, you should take any available courses in business in high school; also business English, bookkeeping, accounting, business law, typing, shorthand, and business correspondence. These are important preparatory courses that lead directly to your goal.

Although it is possible to get a job as a bookkeeper and possibly even a junior accountant without one, the importance of a college education can't be stressed enough. If you are truly interested in becoming an accountant, the best investment in your future is to attend college. An immediate job might seem more attractive now, but in the long run you'd have been better off if you had received an education. If you don't get a college education, you start work in a lower slot. Your education is cut off at about the halfway point. You start with less pay. Advancement is slower. And it cuts out your chances of gaining extra skills, which could bring you all kinds of benefits, such as a management position.

There are a number of types of college education you can receive. You can attend a two-year commercial college, where courses of study are slanted specifically toward your field of specialization. You can attend a four-year college and take, in addition to business courses, classes of a general nature. (Of course, after college graduation, you can go on to graduate school to earn a master's degree; after that, you can even go on to receive a doctorate in accounting.)

There are some very definite advantages of going to college. It develops good work habits. It prepares you for a higher position, since many public-accountant firms consider only college graduates for positions. College teaches you to reason logically and independently. It gives you time to mature. Academic courses help you to express your views more clearly, more forcefully, and in more proper and acceptable form and terms. Through college, your viewpoint is broadened. Also, as you participate in college activities, chances are you will develop a sense of poise. College, of course, makes it easier for you to find a job, and, very important, college usually qualifies you to take the CPA examination (more about that later). Surveys have shown that most accountants around the country have attended college.

Also, in preparing yourself for accounting, never close your mind to the chance of further background experience. A law school that ordinarily refuses admission to its summer school for beginning students might relax this rule for a student with a certain background: taxes and processing and account collecting.

In accounting, incidentally, bookkeeping is very important. Even though the federal government considers bookkeeping to be a clerical job, it is important to know the subject well before becoming an accountant.

If we compared the contents of two textbooks, one a first- year course in bookkeeping and the other a first-year course in accounting, we would find the following similarities:

Both books begin with principles of basic bookkeeping records, assets, liabilities, proprietorship, etc.

Both take the student along similar routes, until he or she can do a worksheet.

Both cover special journals covering expenses and incomes and notes and interest.

There are differences, however. The bookkeeping text concludes with instructions on special systems for personal, social, professional, and farm books. The text on accounting goes deeper. It takes up these special aspects of accounting: bad debts and depreciation; purchase requisitions, orders, invoices, and control of cash; drafts, bills of lading, collection devices; verification auditing, adjusting balances of various accounts; interim statements, classification and proration of expenses; and the voucher system, partnerships, division of partnership profits, corporations, investments, cost accounting, agencies and branches, consolidations, analysis of financial statements, payrolls and taxes.