[icpait]

I got a 2.6 gpa in finance and tried to get a job immediately after graduation to no avail. I then decided to go to community college to meet the necessary requirements to sit for the cpa. I recently passed all four parts of the cpa exam but my question now is will employers look at my gpa even though i have passed the exam? keep in mind that I have no experience in accounting at all so this will be an entry level job for me.

[spongfunk]

Passing all 4 parts should help a lot. Especially if your 2.6 is from mostly finance classes. You may not get your pick of prime entry level jobs but since you have passed all 4 parts you should definitely get an offer from a firm.

FAR: 85
AUD: 80
REG: 78
BEC: 82

[mrwills12]

I was told in college that if your overall GPA was bad, use your MAJOR GPA instead. I would use your major gpa. There should be stated somewhere your gpa for classes that just related to your major. If that is higher use that one. All you have to do is instead of saying OVERALL GPA 2.6, say MAJOR GPA 3.0 or whatever it is on your resume.

FAR - 88 (Jul 2012)
AUD - 85 (Oct 2012)
BEC - 82 (Nov 2012)
REG - 92 (Jan 2013) DONE!

Using Becker Self Study 2012

[Spock]

I have a contact at one of the big four, working in human resources, and from what I was able to ascertain from her was that firms like the big 4,GT,McGladrey, and pretty much anything in the top 25 vault rankings will have a very structured hiring process mostly stemming from on campus recruiting. Within this processes, where these firms hire pretty much all of there intern/entry level hires, she said the absolute minimum gpa is a 3.0. Unfortunately, anything below that is not even considered unless there is something else that stands out.

Some exceptions that would apply would be if you have super strong work experience, or a good contact at one of these firms who is willing to go to bat for you. As far as having your CPA all passed, that is definitely a plus, but I was told that this is not really as important with the top 25 firms as they like to develop internal hires. Basically, and I hate to say this, a 2.6 is going haunt you for quite a while, most likely until you have either gotten a masters or have been working for about 3-5 years (when you may not need a gpa on your resume).

My advise would be to think long-term; network like mad to get into the best firm you can, even if it is a 3-person local cpa firm. Once you have the CPA certification and a few years of quality experience under your belt that you can speak confidently about, you can tweak your resume in such a way that your gpa would be a non-issue. In fact, my contact at big 4 specifically told me that she has hired a couple of people with this same background, and while it doesn't happen very often, it is definitely something to look forward to.

What exactly are you goals for the future (firm size, public/private, audit/tax/etc?) This will help assess your specific situation.

[Anonymous]

Hold on.

What was your GPA for the community college when you went back? If it was much higher than your original GPA, then toot your horn! Tell the hiring manager about that.

Say something like:

“Yeah, I was a butthead and didn't take my college classes seriously back then. But I got my act together, went back to school, got a better GPA and passed the CPA too.”

That will give you a fighting chance at getting job offers.

[Author]

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