For accounting majors, the Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination can be cause for sleepless nights and countless hours of dedicated study.

But for students enrolled in the McCombs School of Business, the high-stress test just got a little less intimidating.

Of the nearly 200 UT students who took a portion of exam in 2007, 76.8 percent passed on the first try, according to statistics compiled by the American Institute of Public Accounting. UT's passing rate is the highest in the country.

"There really is no magic to it," said Ross Jennings, UT accounting professor and former director of the Master in Professional Accounting program. "We just have students who come here ready to work and faculty that is more than willing to teach them. It has been a high-quality program for some time and will continue to be one."

Tied for second at 73.3 percent are Texas A&M University and the University of Iowa. At fourth, the University of Georgia had a 71.7 percent passing rate and the University of Wisconsin ranked fifth at 70.3 percent.

Ryan Wilson, an accounting graduate student at UT, said he feels ready for the test after completing the rigorous accounting program.

"As much as I hated it at the time, all the effort that the CPA prep class required helped me feel much more comfortable going into the test," Wilson said. "All those accounting articles can be hard to decipher at times, but the faculty here is the best in the country, and they know how to prepare a student."

Wilson is enrolled in the integrated MPA program and will be taking portions of the test at the end of the semester.

Wilson said that while at an internship at Ernst & Young L.L.P., he felt his hard work at the business school allowed him to stand above interns from other schools.

"Out of the several recruiters I have spoken with, they have pretty much unanimously said that students here are the type that they want to hire," Wilson said. "There are only four or five schools in the country that they put a lot of recruiting resources into, and McCombs is definitely one of them."

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools