Starting MAcc in the fall -- ultimate goal is corp finance

Rather than write a rambling story I'll give you the key points:

-26 years old. -Bachelors in a useless field of study from an absolute shit tier state school. -Worked blue collar wage slave jobs for the past few years because I can't find any white collar work in my shithole town. -Beginning coursework in autumn of 2016 at an okay MAcc program in NJ/NYC/Philly region with good OCR from Big 4 (not sure which program I'll be attending.) -Want to break into corporate finance.

From my understanding, audit at a large public accounting firm is a great place to build a career because of the training and the breadth of the work. However, it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life. Ultimately I'd like to switch to corporate finance and climb my way up the ladder. I realize it's still very early to be thinking about this but I'm already in my mid 20s with nothing to show for it, so I'd like to have at least a semblance of a plan so I can make as few mistakes as possible.

I guess the purpose of this thread is to ask: which of these plans, presumably after 3-5 years of Big 4 public accounting experience, is most likely the best way to position myself for a career in corporate finance that is more strategy than accounting?

-Jump to assistant controller/controller and grind it out to more senior positions until making CFO (seems like a shitty path because it's so easy to get stuck doing accounting work for the rest of your life.) -Jump to senior FP&A, hopefully an FP&A role that is more oriented toward revenue forecasting and strategy than straight up accounting. Progress to FP&A management roles with an increasingly greater strategic component, possibly even transition to corporate development? -Apply to top MBA programs either directly out of audit or after another year or two of resume building, but I'm unsure of what the best course of action is after the top MBA -- directly into corp finance e.g. FP&A manager, or maybe top tier consulting for a few years and then exit into corp finance/corp development?

Any input, especially from those of you who have done audit to corporate finance, would be appreciated. Thank you.

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