CPA or MS in Finance/CFA?

I've been curious about this for awhile, and I thought Wall Street Oasis might provide some good insight. I graduated with a B.A. in Finance in May 2016, and I was lucky enough to find a good job as a compliance consultant/officer for a major financial firm. However, I know I have a ceiling in this role and would like to explore CPA or MS in Finance and CFA. I was wondering what the better route might be. I hear that the CPA is more in demand. The problem is, I have little accounting background and would have to take about 7 or 8 more accounting classes before being able to take the CPA. Of course, I could just do that at a state school, and it would only cost me $7000-$1000. I have also thought about getting my M.S. in Finance and then pursuing the CFA. I'm not sure if I could get the investment-related work experience required for the CFA without an M.S. in Finance. Compliance does not count as far as I know. I had an average GPA (3.0) from an average school (Mizzou). I know I'm not getting into Ivy League, but I got a 730 on the GMAT and have been accepted into Saint Louis University. It's a solid school, ranked about #30 for graduate business programs. But I know it's no target school. I plan to apply to Washington University in St. Louis as well, but that would set me back more financially.
At this point, do you think I would be better served pursuing a CPA, M.S. in Finance, CFA, or just continue to earn a solid paycheck in a somewhat mundane compliance role? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

In my experience, you are looking at two different career paths. I am taking CFA Level III in June and finishing the MSA Program at University of Texas - Dallas in December. I got in to grad school as a Level II Candidate and was working full time at JPM (sales) when I started the grad program. It took me about 1.5 semesters to realize I didn't need to do both the CFA and MSF - the material repeats a great amount (and the CFA is way cheaper). Unless you are going to a target school it's going to be a waste of time. I changed my major to MSA only because I didn't want that money to go to waste and all of the classes I had taken would count towards it (yes, I am aware it's a sunken cost and flawed logic). If you pursue the CPA it will open doors, but they are different than an MSF/CFA. You can look at other posts about how transferrable different groups w/in Big 4 (TAS, Valuation, M&A) can be as far as moving into IB or other areas. My advice is look at what you really want to do - my brother is a senior manager at Big 4 and it's a nice living, but it's going to be different than IB, ER, PE, etc. **P.S. I have been told by CFA Charter holders that the institute is not super strict on what qualifies as "work experience". I would research it, but if you are working in compliance for a financial institution it probably would count for time served.

 

I'll catch a lot of flack for saying this but I'd hire a CPA over a CFA any day. The difference? A CFA means you passed 3 exams, a CPA means that you're going to have a very easy time understanding all the accounting nuances of my industry very quickly and therefore I won't need to explain things to you 10,000 times during the course of the job. Having said that you said you have little accounting experience, so the CFA will be much easier for you to get.

I agree with the other poster that there is a ton of overlap between a masters in finance and the CFA and you likely won't need both. If you want to go the CFA route re-evaluate your desire for grad school after getting the 3 letters after your name, that may be enough to get you where you want to be.

 
Best Response

You're going to need to provide a bit more detail to get useful answers. Specifically, what is it do you want to do (i.e. do you 'like' what you do and want to keep doing it; do you want a more analytical role like ER; do you just want to make more money than god; etc?) Because as NoseGoes18 noted, the career paths are all very different.

Having said that, CPA (i.e. audit / tax) is what i'd refer to as the career equivalent of a fixed income annuity. You're probably not gonna shoot the lights out, but you'll also be able to afford a decent quality of life without the daily stress of possibly losing your job. Of course if you go Big4 and shoot for partner, you can indeed make boatloads of money with a solid pension to boot, but then you're basically subjecting yourself to finance-esque stressors. (http://goingconcern.com/what-can-you-expect-make-big-4-firm-over-15-yea…)

MS in Finance is probably not useful from an average school. Don't get me wrong, I've only gone to average schools in my life but the ROI is probably not attractive unless you have a very specific plan or reason for going there. Besides the nominal cost, the opportunity cost and lost career progression of 1-2 years makes it very difficult to dig yourself out of that hole. Part time is a good option, but again, for an average school, you're not going to see that many doors open for yourself. Sorry if you wanted a more positive answer.

CFA is....weird. Despite having one myself, I've yet to figure out exactly how it's supposed to help at much of anything. I've met some charterholders who are literal geniuses and other charterholders who are about three steps below troglodytes on the tree of life. Bottom line, at this point, I don't give or take any credit from anyone for having a CFA as it seems wholly uncorrelated with ability in my experience. However, for the specific purpose of finding a job in ER (both sell-side and buy-side), I do see some places giving a bit of weight to the credential if you bring a solid application to the table. In your compliance oriented job, unless you can spin some industry expertise out of it, I think you will be hard pressed to do this without very strong networking efforts.

So what does this all mean? 1) you need to sufficiently define your goals; 2) a CPA is useful for accounting if you're into that; 3) a M.S. in Finance from a 'meh' kinda school is useless; 4) the charter by itself is useless if you don't have other supporting credentials or really strong networking. Feel free to ask more questions once you address point #1.

 

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