Bachelor of Arts
Major
The accounting major at Goshen College is designed to prepare you for success. Our graduates pass the CPA exam at rates that exceed both the national and Indiana passing rates. The most recent CPA exam passing rates for those taking the exam for the first time, place us 9th in the country for programs of a similar size and 1st in Indiana.
Our program isn’t only about accounting. Students strengthen their business skills through courses in business analytics, operations management, and business strategy. Our accounting majors have a strong history of internship success that often leads to a post-graduation job opportunity but the hands-on learning doesn’t only happen in the internship. Our students can sharpen their business skills by helping to manage the on-campus coffee shop or study business process innovation with one of our local business partners.
You will start with foundational concepts from accounting, information systems, data analysis, and economics. Concepts that help build a context for where accounting lives. Second- and third-year courses will cover intermediate-level concepts in cost accounting, financial accounting, taxation, and business analytics. Your final year will be spent polishing your auditing skills and developing an ability to think strategically. All accounting majors complete a course that helps to prepare them for career success, from creating an outstanding resume to developing impressive interviewing skills. Along the way you will have countless opportunities to apply what you are learning through internships and other hands-on learning experiences.
You will be challenged to weave ethics and social responsibility through every course. You are expected to question, research, and weigh the impact of business decisions on employees, customers, suppliers, owners, and the community, and the environment.
Internships with accounting firms, and businesses of all sizes let you build your resume before you graduate. Even that part-time job during college is developing transferable skills that employers look for. Your first career fair will happen early in your sophomore year and many of our students find their first accounting internship through that event. Our strong alumni network will also help you make connections wherever you want to pursue your accounting career.
Every accounting major must choose at least one experience-focused course. For many, a full-time, paid internship in the spring or summer of their junior year, meets this requirement. Additional options include participating on the management team of Java Junction, the on campus coffee shop, or learning about business process innovation, on site, at one of our local business partners.
Over the course of your time at Goshen College, your collective experiences can lead you to opportunities in public accounting, corporate finance, taxation, auditing, compliance, risk management, financial services, analytics, executive leadership and academia. Many of our students choose to pursue graduate study in accounting, business, law or related fields. The degree is built to open the CPA track specifically, but it doesn’t require you to take it.
Goshen College prepared me well for a career in accounting and finance through hands-on coursework, real-life case studies, internship opportunities, and professors who genuinely cared about my success. My SST experience in Cambodia was a highlight that expanded my worldview and ignited a love for travel and experiencing new cultures. But most importantly, I developed lifelong friendships and a set of values that continue to guide me today.
Seth Grimes '11
Senior Director, Corporate Finance and Investment Banking at Eli Lilly and Company
Scholarships make up a large portion of Goshen financial aid packages, which average almost $26,000 per student, not counting work-study or loans. As students in a business program, accounting majors may also qualify for endowed awards including the Sauder Scholarship and the Gorsline Scholarship. Run the net price calculator to see your own number and talk it through with the financial aid office when you are ready to take the next step.
It’s a 56-credit undergraduate major that prepares you to build, analyze, tax, and audit an organization’s financial statements — covering financial and managerial accounting, information systems, taxation, auditing, and the business and economics foundation that surrounds them. You declare it with your academic advisor, and the course catalog lists the current requirements.
Goshen’s program is known throughout the country for producing students with the skills and aptitude to succeed in public accounting. The program is nationally ranked (#9) among peer sized institutions for its students passing the CPA exam on the 1st attempt. All students begin with the same core accounting classes and can customize their plan of study based on whether they ultimately choose to pursue the CPA exam or an alternative path.
You’ll take 56 credit hours, sequenced deliberately: foundational business and accounting courses in the first two years, the technical core — intermediate accounting, taxation, cost accounting — in years two and three, and auditing and your capstone in the final year. Somewhere along the way, you’ll take a required experience-focused: a required experience-focused course, which you can fulfill through an internship or another applied, hands-on placement arranged with faculty.
Both, deliberately. You’ll work through real case studies in cost accounting and auditing, and the required experience-focused course puts you in an actual accounting or business environment before you graduate.
Internships with CPA firms and other large businesses let you build your resume before you graduate, so you leave with work you can point to. Students have previously interned at EY, RSM, Eli Lilly, Crowe and Kruggle Lawton. Many sign while they are still in college, then go on to work for these companies as CPAs
This experience leads to public accounting, corporate finance, taxation, auditing, compliance, risk management, financial services, analytics, executive leadership and academia as common paths, along with graduate study in accounting, business, law or related fields. The degree is built to open the CPA track specifically, but it doesn’t require you to take it.
Professor of Accounting
Program Director
Department Chair
Professor of Accounting
Professor of Economics
Carl Kreider Chair and Co-Director of Global Engagement
Associate Professor of Business
Associate Professor of Business
Assistant Professor of Business
Assistant Professor of Business
Assistant Professor of Information Technology
