GMAT and Graduate Accounting Programs

Hi, Everyone,

I have been out of school about thirty years, and I am considering applying for a masters in accountancy program that requires the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT). Do you have any recommendations on GMAT preparation courses or books that are excellent to study for someone like myself who has been out of school for a while and needs to study to try to attain a high score on the GMAT?

Also, if anyone has personal experience with any of the following graduate programs in accounting that we have discussed on this board in the past (or any other online graduate programs in Accounting, I would be most grateful--the types of assignments, frequency of exams/how the examinations are administered, difficulty of the courses, etc. (that type of information):

Auburn University Distance MAc Program
http://www.mac.business.auburn.edu/distancemac.cfm

Northeastern University Graduate Certificate in Forensic Accounting
http://www.spcs.neu.edu/gradcert_forensic/

Liberty University online Master of Science in Accounting
http://www.liberty.edu/index.cfm?PID=10971

Ellis College--online Graduate Certificate in Accounting
http://ellis.nyit.edu/schools/certificate/business.php

Sacramento State--online Masters Degree in Accounting
http://www.cce.csus.edu/programs/ms_accountancy.htm

SUNY-IT Online Master of Science in Accountancy
http://web2.sunyit.edu/programs/graduate/msacc/

University of Hawaii--Internet-Based Distance Masters of Accounting
http://www.hawaii.edu/soa/ibd_macc.html

University of West Florida--Online Certificate in Professional Accountancy
http://www.uwf.edu/account/certificate.htm

I need to pick up 15 more graduate hours in Accounting, so I am looking to either just acquire those hours or go ahead and complete a Masters degree in Accounting. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Nellie

 

If you live in or near a city that offers such a course, there are some companies that offer live instruction on preparing for the GMAT. Veritus and Powerscore are two that come to mind.

 

Manhattan GMAT offers some of the best, most comprehensive set of books available (follow the link to their MGMAT Store). They have live and pre-recorded courses/lectures available, but I think that is overkill (unless your trying to score 700, which is unnecessary for the programs you've listed). A "high" GMAT score for these programs is more like 600.

Definetly use The Official Guide for GMAT.

In addition to those you've listed, there is UCONN, Golden Gate University and Syracuse. As well as MBA programs such as Saint Leo , Upper Iowa University, and Utica College with 15+ credits in accounting.

Here is another list of accounting programs.

UWF only offers 2 Acct prefix courses, 1 Tax prefix course, and 1 Bus Law course. Other than that, this is the lowest price option with the out-of-state tuition waiver for online studies.

Sacramento State is the most bang for your buck. About the cost of most Certificate programs you can get an AACSB Masters degree! Understand that this program is Synchronous (PST, 5-7 I believe).

Certificate or a Masters degree? It would be helpful if you could tell us what you plan to use the degree for.

What is your academic background (for determining if you meet pre-requisites).

Where are you located? For example, if your in Florida, there are other very good options there if you qualify for in-state tuition.

 

Sorry to hijack the thread, but this statement reminded me of the recent thread that dealt with some schools only accepting courses with ACC prefixes for the 18 graduate hours needed to comply with SACS requirements.

If just occurred to me that my AACSB, B&M Ph.D. in Accounting doesn't have a single course with an ACC prefix. In fact, all of the graduate courses, MBA, MSA, Phd have a BAD (business administration) prefix.

 

Seems kind of silly to require a certain prefix for equivalent courses. I understand it could be a problem in very isolated cases. My point here is that in the case of the UWF certificate program, only 9 hours are in accounting related courses. This would fall short of Nellie's requirement for 15 semester hours.

I did not know you had a Ph.D. in Accounting.

 

Hi, Macattack, Foobar, and AV8R,

Thank you so much for all your help with this. I really appreciate it. I need to acquire some additional graduate accounting hours to be able to teach in SACS-accredited universities/colleges. So, that is my intention. Thank you so much for pointing out that SACS requires ACC prefixes on the graduate accounting courses. This is important information for me to know given my plans.

Thanks again.

Nellie

 

Just to be clear - SACS does NOT require ACC prefixes for graduate accounting courses.

Misguided deans, department chairs, assistant/associate provosts and others that don't understand that an accounting course can have an MBA, DBA, BUS, MGT or BAD prefix are the problem here.

 

This is a problem that occurs when you have the equivalent of trained monkeys performing HR-related functions...

Normally, this and course numbering issues can be overcome by providing a short description of the course to augment the transcript; most of the course descriptions for recent work are online, too.

Dave