I’m a Junior in HS who is looking to major in accounting and become a CPA. I live in Minnesota and am looking for a school that is in a warmer climate and has a tuition that is either below 35k or that I can reliably get below that number with merit aid. My stats are a 3.9 UW GPA (could go down to a 3.8/3.75 since my grades this semester aren’t the best), 33 ACT (retaking so superscore may be higher), and 5 APs (max rigor). I am also going full time DE next year at UMN. My ECs include going to DECA internationals with some awards at state and district level, working at 5am before school everyday, and being an NHS officer.
A major priority for me is credits since I want to be a CPA. Ideally, I want a school where all my DE and AP credits will transfer and I can take cheap summer courses to graduate early while getting a masters at the same time as my bachelors degree. Schools I’m interested in currently include ASU, CSU Fullerton, USC (Socal), and FIU.
Cheap summer courses can be found at your local CC, otherwise oos summer tuition tends to be pretty high ($4000+ a class). Your in state options are a good option, my oldest graduated from our flagship after 4 1/2 years with her masters in accounting to get the 150 credits. It seems ridiculously easy to get jobs as a CPA (my daughter deferred her job offer for a year to pass her exams).
Your best bet to get credit for all your DEs is to stay in state. UMN is a great school!
My D’s experience is that the colleges wouldn’t tell her about DE credit acceptance until AFTER matriculation. She had to submit the syllabus for each course and it had to be reviewed by a professor before they gave credit. (AP credit was much more straight forward). She didn’t know if they’d be accepted until 2 weeks before classes started.
tuition that is either below 35k or that I can reliably get below that number with merit aid.
In this statement, your overall budget all in is $35K or just tuition has to be below $35K/year?
I can only comment on CSU Fullerton. As an OOS student, costs including tuition/fees, room and meal plans are going to be around $45K/year not including transportation, books and personal expenses. You pay a Non-resident supplemental tuition fee of $444/unit so if you take 15 units per semester, that is an additional $6600.
Also note that CSU Fullerton offers no financial aid to Non-residents and very little merit aid so expect to pay full fees to attend. You can run the Net Price calculator to confirm: Net Price Calculator
CSU Fullerton, like all Cal states are test blind so your ACT will not be considered for admissions or scholarships.
Good luck with your college list but California public schools will not meet your budget.
Yeah, that’s what my grandparents told me but that price of UMN seems crazy for a place that I don’t want to live in, especially since my parents wouldn’t let me commute. Also, I’ve been talking to a family friend that works at a Big 4 firm here and she’s told me it is very difficult to get jobs at offices outside the state your college is located in. Living in Minnesota for 5+ years is just not something I think I can do.
You are welcome and I did see after I posted you clarified your budget. For California, you would need to target private universities instead but your budget can be limiting. As stated, run the Net Price calculator for each school of interest to see if they are affordable options.
The in state cost for UMN is similar to other flagships in state tuition, it’s $64,000 for oos. It’s not easy to find universities that cost less than in state flagships even with merit. Usually you need to find school that are less selective, if that’s ok with you.
I can’t believe its normal to pay 40k for a state school even if it’s prestigious. My view is probably skewed though because most people in my family went to Purdue in state where it is very affordable. I feel like I’d be able to rationalize going to a less prestigious school if I liked it more compared to UMN.
I used this source which has the CPA passage exam rates from an array of universities, but the data is getting pretty long in the tooth (2018 passage rates). But below are some schools in warmer climates that I think have a chance of hitting your budget (some guaranteed to do so, some possible to do so). Since the schools you mentioned were big schools, that’s what I focused on, but if you are interested in smaller schools, let us know.
I would forget about any of the schools in Southern California, including some of the private schools, because they tend to be very popular and competitive with the OOS crowd.
If you’re talking about USC, their tuition is about $90,000 a year with tuition and R/B.
They do have merit aid, but it’s generally reserved for national merit winners, and even then, it’s only half tuition. The rare presidential scholarships are very limited. They do have scholarships for athletes but it has to be an athlete at the national level.
I don’t know if ASU would work.
You should research and enter your number into any college’s NPC, to get a better idea of what your costs would be.
Check out the Farmer School of Business at Miami of Ohio. Lots of kids from MN and you are likely to get close to your all in cost with merit as they are generous. *edit: Didnt see the warm climate requirement. Not warm, but warmer than MN. Good luck.
USC’s full tuition scholarship is referred to as a Trustee Scholarship. In the past, it was awarded to around 100 students/year. The Presidential Scholarship is a half tuition scholarship.
If you need extra courses to reach the 150 credit prerequisite for the CPA exam, the “cheap[est] summer courses” will likely be at a local community college near home.
But also, be sure to meet all of the subject requirements (__ credits in accounting, __ credits in other business, __ credits in ____, etc.) listed for the state CPA exam, although these tend to be substantially fewer than 120 credits.
There are a lot of public universities in the US that are very good, but that I would not call “prestigious”. It is also normal for out of state students to pay $40,000/year or more, sometimes significantly more, to attend these “good but not prestigious” out of state public universities. However, many students, probably a large majority, are constrained to stay in-state due to budget limitations.
I would definitely include an application to UMN. It is very good and might be your best bet to stay within budget. About eleven months from now you might find it to be your only affordable acceptance, and you definitely want to make sure that you get at least one affordable acceptance. It is entirely reasonable and common for students to go out of state for their first full time job after first graduating from university.
We found quite a few universities that with merit aid came in at around $40,000/year, but this was a number of years ago and costs are likely to have increased. The only universities that we found that came in less than $40,000/year were our in-state public universities, and universities in Canada. The latter however was primarily because we (our daughters and me) have dual citizenship, and also do not meet your desire for somewhere warmer than Minnesota. We did not look at universities in the south that are known for merit aid.
I am not sure whether any schools cost over $100,000 per year for the upcoming school year. Some are very close, and will probably be over this number by the time that you get to university. This seems a bit crazy to me, but I am not sure that I can completely explain how we got here.
Others are probably better than me to suggest some schools that are relatively more likely to provide good merit aid.
Thanks for the clarification on USC! I was under the impression that much more students there were receiving merit aid because of anecdotal evidence. And being full pay there is pretty much out of the question for me since on my net price calculator I didn’t even qualify for loans.
If you like California you might like UNR, University of Nevada Reno. It’s near the border and Lake Tahoe, and it might come within your budget with the Presidential scholarship.