GMAcc Program Update

Our GMAcc program (Graduate-Only Master of Accountancy) is now in its second year and we have grown the class from 3 students in the first year to 10 students in this second year of the program. The GMAcc program is a 54-credit program for students without undergraduate degrees in accounting. The curriculum calls for two years of academics with a summer internship between year one and year two.

The GMAcc pilot class of three students now in their second year of the program joined up with the IMAcc graduate students who are working on their “fifth” or graduate year. The integration is going quite well and we can report that one of the GMAcc students in the pilot class is a teaching assistant this semester and a second student from the same class will be a project assistant in the spring semester. Students in the pilot class had internships with Ernst & Young and KPMG. All of these students received job offers following their summer internships.

The 10 students who started this past fall include one undergraduate from UW-Madison and 9 international students, all from the Asia-Pacific region. The main driver behind the large international flavor of this particular class was due, in part, to the preferred employers’ interests in the Asia-Pacific region. We also had an overwhelming large pool of international candidates which comprised approximately 90% of our applicant pool. At this stage in the fall semester, we are working to place these 10 students in professional internships with our preferred employers.

We intend to admit somewhere between 10 and 15 students for the GMAcc program next fall. Our ability to admit students is driven on both the numbers of students in the IMAcc program and classroom capacity. In addition, we canvas our preferred employers to determine their needs and capacity to place our students. Questions about the GMAcc program can be address to Lynette Stolarzyk, Director of Professional Programs, in Accounting, at lstolarzyk@bus.wisc.edu.