The master timeline
the first steps
- When I was in my 4th year of college, I had 114 credits before I started my second semester, 6 semester internship (after 7 full semesters of college). This means I had 120 credits after my 4th year was complete (wow math is cool). The usual college CPA candidate will wait until they get 120 credits to submit their transcripts to Wisconsin which usually results in a month or two of waiting since there is such a large flood of applications to get your NTS. Well I took a different route and applied through Alaska. This idea scared me at first until I talked to a Becker representative and realized it is completely normal and there is nothing wrong about doing it this way. The reasoning for this is that you need 120 credits in the state of Wisconsin to sit for the exam but in Wisconsin you can have 102 credits to sit for the exam (18 credits short of 120… math is so awesome).
- To give you a good overview of this overwhelming yet rather simple process of the CPA Exam, the first step in sitting for the CPA Exam is to submit your transcripts to the Accounting Board which is in Tennessee. You will usually do this through your schools registrars office to prove that you have enough credits to sit. I submitted my transcripts after my internship around April 20th. So according to my transcripts I was only at 114 credits when I submitted my transcripts to Alaska. Which as stated before, Alaska only requires 102 credits to sit for the exam. I filled out the attached sheet and gave it to the registrars office.
- I then got an email from the Board of Accountancy about a week after saying that I have been approved and that I can purchase my exams to get my NTS. I proceeded to purchase all four exams on one NTS (and I will explain why I did that later). I then went to the prometric website and scheduled my first exam which was Reg on June 7th and I had 6 full weeks to study. Then I paid for the exams and got my NTS only about a week after. If you do this before the end of the semester (May 16) you’ll be able to beat the rush of all other applicants and won’t have to wait 1 or 2 months like they will. It’s pretty amazing how you can do this so much more efficiently than everybody else. I had 2 exams done before some of my friends go their NTS. Ask me more questions if you’d like or I can get you in touch with a Becker rep who helped me a ton with the process.
- But after I submitted my transcripts through the registrars office, I got an email of my NTS with a code to use and instructions. You’ll need to print your NTS to sit for the actual exam. And you’ll use your Alaska jurisdiction code throughout the process. At times you start to believe you live in Alaska haha jk. But it only took me about a week of waiting to get my NTS and then I scheduled my first one and I was good to