Master of Science in Accountancy (MSA) Common Questions

We offer online courses through Coursera to help prospective students satisfy the requirements. You will want to make sure that you earn a course completion certificate for each course so you can prove your successful completion of the courses.

Financial Accounting: The following three courses, in combination, will satisfy the principles of financial accounting prerequisite. 

• Financial Accounting: Foundations
• Financial Accounting: Advanced Topics 
• Formal Financial Accounting

Other Pre-Requisite Needs:

• Business Management

*Not required, but highly recommended: Finance & Statistics.

Applications open on October 1.

Our program begins in June each year, and many of our courses are semester specific and must be taken in sequence.

There are basically two key reasons why the MSA program starts so early. First, by starting to take accounting classes during the summer, our students can become eligible to take the US CPA exam in the spring semester. We structure our MSA program to ensure that those students who want to take the US CPA exam can do so either while they are still in school, before they start working in the US or before they are required to return to their home country. If we started our program in the fall semester, it would be difficult to structure our program to allow students to start taking these exams during the spring or before they would start working.

Second, for accounting majors, the primary US recruiting takes place early the fall semester at all major US universities. This is when most, if not all, US jobs are filled. In addition, US recruiters focus almost all of their time assessing students’ soft skills. Thus, by starting in the summer, our MSA students can begin to focus on improving the soft skills they will need to compete for any job openings. The US job market is very competitive. That is why, at Illinois, we devote considerable attention to the development of our students’ personal and professional soft skills. The summer semester gives us an opportunity to do this before the recruiting process starts.

No, the MSA program is designed for students with a variety of different backgrounds. Students will be individually placed in courses based on their undergraduate coursework and be provided with the tools and knowledge to become successful in the business world.

The MSA program requires students to have completed an introductory Financial Accounting course along with a course in Business Management prior to admissions.

We are looking for well-rounded applicants that may have varying amounts of previous accounting coursework and/or experience. We expect you to have done well academically. We also want to know what other interests you have. The resume and personal statement is your opportunity to share with us something else about yourself and what your goals are so that we can get to know you better and be able to evaluate you not just on your grades and test scores when we make a decision. For example, what extracurricular activities are you involved in? Have you done volunteer work, been involved in clubs, student groups, or athletics? What leadership roles have you held? What did you learn from the work experiences you completed?

We require either the GMAT or GRE unless an applicant has completed all four years of undergraduate study at a US institution or completed a 2+ year US Master's Degree. We will also waive the GMAT/GRE for applicants with at least two years of work experience (internships are not included).

An application file is considered incomplete until all required information is received by us. We will not initiate a review of an incomplete file. As we make admissions decisions on a rolling basis, it is very important that you get us all of the information we need as soon as possible. Any information that we request as part of the application process that is received after the March 15 deadline will still be reviewed by the admissions committee, as long as we still have space available in the program.

We evaluate all aspects of your application. Each member of the admissions committee brings his or her own perspective and judgment to the process. Grades and test scores, the GMAT/GRE and the TOEFL or IELTS if required, are perhaps the most important part of the application. However, the committee also looks closely at the personal statement, your letters of reference and your resume.

The MSA program is a one-year professional program in Accountancy for those students who did not receive a U.S. bachelor’s degree in Accounting. The MAS program is designed for students that have a bachelor’s degree in Accounting from an AACSB accredited U.S. Institution

The MSA program does not defer admission. If you were offered admission and cannot attend we can re-code your application for 1 year. You would go into the following year’s applicant pool. Please note that there is no guarantee of another offer of admission.

Simple—You Don’t. The College does not require official transcripts unless you are admitted to our program. After being admitted, a student may bring or send their official transcripts to:

The Graduate College
507 East Green Street
Suite 101, MC-434
Champaign, IL 61820

The College prefers that the recommender submit their recommendation online. If he/she is unable to do so, please ask your recommender to send the letter directly to ms-accy@business.illinois.edu or mail to:

Business Graduate Programs - ATTN: MSA Program
Gies College of Business
3019 Business Instructional Facility
515 E. Gregory Dr.
Champaign, IL 61820

In some cases graduates of our MSA program decide to pursue an academic career and continue on to a doctoral program in accounting. However, this is not the route we would recommend, as both programs have different goals. The MSA is a professional program focused on practitioners of accounting. Therefore, the curriculum emphasizes applications and practical approaches. Doctoral programs in accounting focus on research.

The PhD program at Gies is extremely competitive, admitting only 4 or 5 new students a year from several hundred applicants. For more information visit PhD in Accountancy.