CPA – an international candidate’s process

২০ শে জুন, ২০২১ রাত ১:৫৫

If you are a CPA exam candidate who studied outside of the United States, you’re in a unique position. While candidates from this country go through relatively a simple process to apply for the CPA exam, international students – those who are applying outside of the United States or studied outside but applying for this examination after coming into the U.S. face some unavoidable hurdles to be eligible for this exam.

But it is my opinion that the CPA application process does not have to be intimidating. With proper planning and an understanding of the steps involved, one can sit for the exam sooner. In the U.S., the states grant the CPA license, so the State Board of Accountancy carries out the accounting laws and regulations. Additionally, they determine the licensure requirements to get a CPA license in that jurisdiction. United States has 55 boards of Accountancy, one in each state and territory.

In this context, you may also hear about NASBA, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, which serves the above-mentioned 55 jurisdictions. They work to establish common accounting practices and help to process a candidate's CPA application.

Each state board of accountancy has slightly different CPA exam requirements. So, one needs to pick the jurisdiction where he/she will apply for the CPA examination and finally get the license.

Basic CPA requirements would be the 3 E’s – Education, Examination, and Experience.

Education: In general, one needs to have a bachelor’s degree and 150 credit hours of general education to take the exam and most states will require you to have completed specific accounting classes. The thing is many candidates do not meet the minimum requirements when they apply. Therefore, they need to review carefully the CPA requirements of the state, in which they would like to sit.

Examination: Pass the entire Uniform CPA examination which consists of 4 sections – that cover a wide range of accounting topics.

Experience: Acquire at least 1 year of relevant accounting experience

As I have already mentioned, each state board of accountancy defines the exam eligibility requirements that candidates must meet in order to sit for the exam. Almost all of the state board wants candidates to have/met 120 credit hours of education, equivalent of a bachelor’s degree before they let you sit for the examination. But there is some state who maintain the 150-hour rule as a part of their test eligibility requirement. Finally, many state boards also require candidates to have a certain number of upper-level accounting credit hours and having a US citizen or permanent resident status (for some states only) before they sit for the exam. The best way for candidates to understand their intended state board’s requirements through visiting the state board’s website and or contact them directly.

Since my purpose is to give you an idea of how it goes when an international candidate (student who studied/ received their academic degree’s from outside of the United States) I want to share my story with you here.

As a part of the exam eligibility fulfillment, one has to send all his official school (university) transcripts. Yes, many universities and colleges are well into the 21st century and can give you or your intended state board instant access to your transcripts via pdf, but please don’t assume that your school is one of them! There is still plenty of old-schools (like mine) places out there that insist on doing everything with paper and mails, which just ends up creating delays and headaches. Better to get this step out of the way first so you can address any issues early. Now the question is, which transcripts do you need to send in? Every. Last. One.

This includes all universities/ colleges/ community colleges, etc. that you have earned college (grad and undergrad) level credit for.

In my case, collecting those transcripts was not the only issue. Since I am an international graduate for USA, they require these transcripts to be evaluated where they consider/review how many credit hours you actually have completed/met in terms of US education standard. For CPA examination credential evaluation purposes, each state board has their own instruction or specific evaluation agency, of whose evaluation it will only accept, so my suggestion will be to check that in advance with your intended state board.

There is some credential evaluation agency, who require the academic transcripts to be directly sent to them from your educational institution and there are few – who will accept transcripts from you. Before choosing a state board and or their acceptable evaluation agency, please confirm that you will able to meet their requirement.

Once the evaluation of your academic records are completed, and if they found you have met the academic hour requirement, they will send the evaluation report directly to your state board. But if they found that you are lack any coursework or credit requirements, they will inform you back.

Let’s say, you have met the academic coursework requirement, you may then move forward to apply for an NTS (notice to schedule) through NASBA. Basically, this is your final application to NASBA so that they grant/permit you to sit for the CPA examination. You have to complete an application and pay the fees, then NASBA will ask for your state board-specific documents to send to them. Which generally includes, credential evaluation report and reference letter.

While applying for the NTS, most states take exam registration fees in advance in addition to CPA application (NTS) fees. For that, you have to decide, which section you’d like to sit for first. I say first because while it is possible to register for all 4 sections of the exam in one testing window, I would strongly advise against doing so. Because in most states you only have a 6 months’ window to sit for the exam sections you register for. Even if you are not working and plan on studying full-time, registering for all four (04) exams is a heavy workload.

Instead, I suggest limiting your first registration for 1 or 2 exam sections at the most. Registering for the remaining sections in a later window won’t cost much additional money and it will give your study schedule some breathing room. Remember, after passing your first exam section, you will have an 18 months’ window to pass all the remaining section exam sections, so you are better off taking your time to study rather than rushing and failing.

To comply with this requirement, you have to request your evaluation agency to send the final report to NASBA for you and you have to download and complete a form for your reference letter and send this directly to NASBA (while putting your NTS application id on the top of the envelope). Generally, a reference letter will be available in the NASBA application portal. All that you have to put basic information and get signature from three (03) individuals who know you. Individuals for the reference can be anyone outside your family and your workplace.

Once you are done with the application and sent out the required documents to NASBA, they will generate an application id and send that to you, which you can use for check/seeing the status of your application. Per NASBA, they do require at least 6 to 8 weeks for completion of a CPA examination application. Once they complete their review and satisfied with the provided documents, they will issue an NTS for you. Which is the permission for you to schedule for the examination.

Now that you have NTS, this will remain valid for 6 to 12 months. You have to now schedule the exam through the Prometric website. Prometric is an authorized center that takes and manages the CPA examination on behalf of NASBA. For scheduling, you have to put your NTS number into the Prometric CPA exam scheduling website, they will provide you some available dates. You need to choose an exam center and a date based on your preparation and convenience.

It is recommended that you go for a particular date in advance because, if you go for pick a date late, there will be a good chance that you may not get it, because most of the dates are taken in advance by the other CPA candidates. If you feel like you have chosen a which is not matching with your preparation or availability, later on, you can always reschedule that with the Prometric website. If you try to reschedule at least 1 month before your set exam date, they will allow you to do it free.

I hope all the above will help you a bit to get an understanding of the entire CPA examination process. You may have probably seen that I have not given any fees for any specific task. Because it will mostly vary for each state. You will be easily able to get that from your desired state board’s website. However, I will make sure to respond, if you have any specific query and or if you want me to explain more about any task in this entire application process.

In any of my next blogs, I will try to give information about the CPA exam structure and detail about each exam section. Till then, good luck with your CPA exam journey!

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