AICPA

Originally published by April Stockwell in McCombs Today and MPA Weekly.

The University of Texas at Austin’s graduate accounting program consistently ranks #1 across the nation for its top notch faculty as well as the high quality accounting education it offers students. Once again the Texas MPA Program has topped the nation with four students, Taylor Atsalis (BBA ‘13, MPA ‘14), Scott Huff (BBA/MPA ‘14), Chongho Kim (MPA ‘14), and Michael Kovacich (MPA ‘13), earning the prestigious 2014 Elijah Watt Sells Award. The American Institute of CPAs bestowed the prestigious award on candidates who obtained a cumulative average score above 95.50 across all four sections of the Uniform CPA Examination, passed all four sections of the Examination on their first attempt, and completed testing in 2014.

To put this in perspective, 91,384 individuals sat for the Examination in 2014 and only 60 candidates met the criteria to receive the award. This year, only three U.S. graduate programs had more than one Elijah Watt Sells winner and the Texas MPA program had as many winners as the other two combined.

All four award winners are now making their mark at their respective workplaces: Taylor is currently employed with EY in Houston, Scott works for Dell in Austin, Chongho is employed with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Boston, and Michael is employed with BDO in Houston.