University of Illinois Gies College of Business: MS in Accountancy

This is a one-year, STEM-designated accounting program designed for two types of students: domestic students who do not have a bachelor’s degree in accounting and international students with any undergraduate degree. We teach students to develop and apply an analytics-oriented mindset to a variety of accounting scenarios, including financial accounting, audit and tax, advisory and managerial, and forensics.

The MSA program begins in June each year. The MSA degree requires 32 semester hours of graduate coursework of which at least 20 hours are in graduate-level accounting courses, and at least 4 hours are in a non-accounting graduate course. Core courses include accounting analysis I & II, managerial accounting, auditing, and federal taxation. Make the curriculum your own with a variety of electives, such as financial reporting standards, risk management & innovation, data-driven decisions in accounting, data analytics for management accounting, data analytics applications in accounting, and more.

Applicants are required to have the equivalent of a U.S. bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution. They should have earned a minimum grade average of “B,” or the equivalent, in the last two years of undergraduate study. In addition, applicants must have completed a one- or two-course sequence in Principles of Accounting along with a course in Business Management, Finance, Statistics, and Economics. This background requirement can be satisfied by completing courses from universities or from online providers such as Coursera, Udacity or EdX.