If you want to go into accounting, I personally would not ED to a small liberal arts college. Maybe Claremont McKenna has a robust accounting internship pipeline, but that’s generally not the case at smaller schools. Claremont McKenna doesn’t even have a specific Accounting/Accountancy major.
Maybe I am wring, but I think Rice University would be a better use of an ED if you want to go into accounting. Even there, you would just be getting a general Business degree.
Your large Texas public universities are all great bets for accounting. The large accounting firms will all recruit there and make it easier to network and apply for internships. Affordability will be the biggest challenge.
Two of the schools whose students have the highest CPA exam pass rate (from 2020, I think) are Texas schools:
- University of Texas at Austin —89.5% pass rate
- Brigham Young University —89.4% pass rate
- Wake Forest University —88.8% pass rate
- Boston College —88.3% pass rate
- University of Michigan-Ann Arbor —88.2% pass rate
- University of Florida — 86.4% pass rate
- University of Virginia — 84.8% pass rate
- Texas A&M University — 82.9% pass rate
- University of Wisconsin-Madison — 82.9% pass rate
Have you looked at your list to see which schools have the most accounting courses? It might be worth checking the CPA exam pass rate, too: https://www.efficientlearning.com/cpa/resources/cpa-exam-pass-rates/
Finally, to get a sense of cost, you should do the Net Price Calculator (NPC) on the website at each school to see which is most affordable.
Sometimes private schools are the most generous with aid, but the least likely to have a strong accounting program. I know Gonzaga University in Washington is strong in accounting. You might check to see what the NPC shows there.