My MAcc experience after finishing the program

Hello! I wanted to share my MAcc program experience along with overviews of how I tackled each class. I would like to say that I read many other posts on this subreddit about the MAcc which were very valuable insights so I hope this will also help someone! I also used the WGU Accounting discord and MAcc FB group as other useful resources to get me through the journey.

I started the MAcc in May'24 and I finished my last class on 7/24/24. The program can be done in two months or less if you really dedicate to it. I chose WGU because of the flexibility of it being an online program as well as the affordability compared to B+M schools. It has also allowed me to get the additional 30 credits so I can begin my CPA journey. I will also receive UWorld CPA materials from WGU within 60 days!

My advice for the program is to stay consistent and find a schedule that works for you. I studied about 3-4 hours a day on weekdays while working fulltime and used the weekends to either take my exams or write my essays. If I ever felt like not studying or was tired I would just take the day off from school. This allowed me to decompress and not get burned out from the program. What really helped me stay encouraged throughout was just getting over the hump of passing those first few classes and ride the momentum throughout.

Now before I talk about each class, your mileage may vary on the difficulty of the classes, but for me the hardest classes in the program were Advanced Auditing, Advanced Tax Concepts, and Advanced Managerial Accounting. Advanced Tax Concepts took two and half weeks to finish, which was the longest course for me in the program. The rest of the classes were much more bearable to me at least.

C254 - Fraud and Forensics Accounting: Beginning with C254, this class for me was the easiest and most interesting course in the program and should only take about a week or two to complete. My advice is to read the textbook fully and lookup a Quizlet set with this course number. The PA and OA align well with this class so if you do well on the PA, you should do the OA!

C214 - Financial Management: You will get an email from one of the course instructors with a study guide. Use this as your only resource for this class and stay away from the textbook. Watch each of the webinars at 1.5x speed to understand the material as well as the bootcamp video with Dr. V. The key for this class is to understand how to use your financial calculator and how to apply it to each question.

The formulas will be provided on the exam. The PA and OA don't align as well with this class as the OA is less calculation-based questions and more fundamental questions. Probably like 65% fundamental questions and 35% calculation questions. This class took me 4 days.

D251 - Advanced Auditing: For Advanced Auditing you will want to read the textbook fully and review the chapter lectures if a certain topic isn't clicking. There will be questions that will reference information from the textbook so it's why I recommend reading the textbook thoroughly. On the sharepoint there should be a 300 multiple choice practice test that I recommend you take as some of those questions were very similar to the OA test.

For me the PA and OA don't align well so my advice is when you're taking the OA to brain-dump as much material as you can. For me I wrote down as much as I could for the sampling/payment cycle which helped me as those were sections I struggled the most on.

C253 - Advanced Managerial Accounting: For Managerial Accounting, I only watched the webinars for this class and didn't read the textbook. I used the following youtube playlist as a supplemental resource for the concepts I didn't understand from the webinars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHIfpdtp_cu4O5tZSy9LyUdvBxWU3z8EH A whiteboard and financial calculator will be necessary for this exam as you are given four hours to complete the OA. A lot of the questions will be calculation heavy and you'll want to brain-dump as many of the formulas as you can once you start the test. My advice is to really understand Weighted-Average vs FIFO and the budgeting sections as those are big chunks of the exam.

C209 - Strategic Management: Read the task tip sheets and follow the rubric. The two tasks are very straight-forward, but I would recommend picking a company that you can easily write about so you can expand on SWOT analysis and such on your papers.

C243: Advanced Financial Accounting: For Advanced Financial Accounting, I didn't use the textbook or watch the cohorts for this class. Instead, I used the following playlist and watched at 2x speed as supplement instead: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFhBwt8J4njEt863MEtlQLK7H029MecK9 The professor does an excellent job simplifying the concepts and was easy to follow throughout. There are a few chapters he doesn't talk about such as partnerships so be sure to read the PowerPoints for the chapters he doesn't talk about. For the concept of inventory transfers I watched the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO3kJKKT_q0&t=242s&ab_channel=DariusClark I would recommend taking the PA as soon as possible so you can have an understanding of how the OA will be structured as it is very similar to the OA. For consolidations, remember the acronym CAR IN BIG

D252: Accounting Research and Critical Thinking: For both performance assessments, you will be using the FASB Codification as your primary research. I used Control+F to easily find the ASC subsections and then made templates for each task and just started writing.

D250: Governmental and Nonprofit Accounting: This class only took me two days to finish, but your mileage may vary for this course. I would recommend reading the textbook completely for this class and doing the chapter quizzes. The textbook for this class is not long at all and was an interesting read for an accounting textbook.

The key to this class is understanding the different government funds and how the journal entries work. You'll want to fully understand the entries for bonds and how modified accrual entries are made before doing the OA. On the OA, you can eliminate answers by simply just knowing if a journal entry should be modified accrual or full accrual so use that to your advantage!

C204: Management Communication: This class should only take a day or two to complete. There should be video instructions for both tasks, which I recommend you watch. For both tasks just keep it simple and don't overthink it.

C239: Advanced Tax Concepts:

For the Tax Return task: I made a checklist for each thing I entered into the accounting software. It isn't a difficult task as long as you are carefully inputting the values in the correct sections on the software. I will say the health insurance section was where I struggled on which is when I scheduled a call with Dr. Walker. She was very kind in explaining to me what I needed to do. If you're stuck on the task return, schedule a 30 to 45 min call with Dr. Walker to help you work through it.

For the OA: Do note that you don't have to read every chapter in the textbook for this class. You should however read the chapters that are listed on the study plan as thoroughly as possible as you will miss very easy questions if you skim the reading. In the sharepoint I recommend doing the practice questions for Property Transactions (Ch. 7/8) and Corporations (Ch. 12/13) as that is 50% of the exam. The PA and OA align well with this class, so use that as one of the supplemental study guides. When working through this class the biggest things you'll want to focus on are E+P, adjusted basis vs basis, realized gain vs recognized gain, corporate formations, all of the tax forms, and understanding how to use the tax table.