A Guide On CPA Exam Requirements

Eligibility criteria for CPA Exam candidates differ from state to state. The following few paragraphs would shed light on CPA Exam Requirements.

Before applying for the exam, candidates must have completed a bachelors or masters degree with 24 semester credits in accounting subjects . The subjects could be tax subject, business law or finance, amongst others.

Candidates who have got 150 semester credit along with the 24 semester credit in the above listed subjects also need to have 12 semester credit in tax subjects or accounting. This is known as the 150 hour rule.

Many states follow this rule as eligibility criteria. The 150 hours of college education can be accumulated by a combination of undergraduate and graduate studies. One need not have 150 hours credit before taking the CPA exam. The number of hours can keep on accumulating even after appearing for the examination. The catch here is that a candidate would be issued the license and certificate only after all the criteria have been met.

This simply means that a candidate needs to have 150 hours of college studies, should clear the CPA exam and meet the experience requirements ( in two tier states). Once a candidate has all of these prerequisites for the certificate, he can simply apply for it to the states accountants board.

Working experience is of core importance in the two tier states and the experience should

be in the public domain, which would also include working as an internal auditor or with a unit of federal government or the state government which has been supervised by a licensed CPA.

The candidates who don't have 150 hours of college credit can apply for the license and be certified only after completing two years of work experience which should include 800 hours of attest activity. However the candidates who have 150 hours of college education or the semester credits , only need to complete 1 year of (1600 hours) of work experience (400 hours of attest activity).

One can say that the amount of work experience required for obtaining certificate is inversely proportional to the amount of education completed at the time of application for the license and the certificate.

There is a rule in most of the states that a candidate of CPA exam must complete the required work experience with in 120 months (10 years) from the date of application.

The exam is a four part computer based examination, thats is held five days a week. This is during an examination window which is for the first two months of each quarter. .A candidates must pass all the part of the examination during the 18 months period which starts from the date, the candidate passes the first part. The marking scale is numeric and the scale doesn't represent percentage. Passing score is 75, which signifies that a candidate has apt knowledge to protect the public interest.

These are the most common CPA exam requirements which have been set by different states accountants boards.