How to Become a Certified Public Accountant?
Enrolling yourself for CA is easy; the real challenge is passing out. Discipline and right attitude can help you reach unattainable goal and make things simpler. CA course is difficult as the syllabus is vast. Clearing all the levels of CA needs average intelligence combined with plenty of hard work. CA is not more difficult than some courses like IAS, IIT, CAT, MBBA, UPSC and many more courses.
It is completely in contrast to engineering as the challenge there is to get into some good college and not passing out. Many CA aspirants get stuck in the studies phase. This may become very frustrating as after a certain age, the career opportunities available become limited. Click here for Accounting Help.
If you compare the number of engineers from good colleges and CA final pass outs, you may get a better perspective. Less than 5% commerce students become CAs and less than 5% engineering students qualify from NITs and IITs. CA is not difficult because of low passing percentage; it becomes tough because aspirants get stuck in the later stage of CA.
Content of the course:
CA students have to study a variety of topics. They need to study some general subjects like Economics, Mathematics, Law, IT, General Management, statistics, etc. Apart from this, there are some specialized subjects like law, cost accounting and many others that need to be studied.
Cost:
CA is relatively cheaper to any other stream and it is accessible to all types of students. It is open for students of various backgrounds. Many CA aspirants are not capable of having privileged education like government school or small town schools. CA is tough for those students who study in Hindi and appear for English exams. It is very challenging for such students to survive the competition. The other side of the situation is equally true as the candidates of other course compare a large number of positions due to reservations. However, the low passing percentage should also be considered.
Coaching classes vs. colleges:
Unlike engineering, medical or management course, CA is a distance learning course. No college provides knowledge on the subject. The CA students have to study all by themselves. But only a handful of students pass the exam this way. So many students choose to take up coaching classes. There are many coaching classes available for CA but these classes cannot be compared with colleges. Most colleges have boarding facility that enables students to live and study together, access resources from library, attend seminars and take help of professors. However, this is not the case for CA students. The quality of knowledge imparted is affected.
Rigorous Experience in articleship:
The desire to have a good college is mitigated somewhat by practical, on job training that is imparted to most CA students during articleship. This is the time when the students have to work under practising CA for three years. It is very important to have proper training as a lot of course theory should be related to practical life because of training. The students, who don’t undertake training seriously, find it difficult to understand the concepts. Sometimes training becomes so rigorous that the students don’t find time to study for the course. Most students get busy with coaching from morning to evening and work in offices during day and there is no time left for self-study or revision. Overall, articleship experience can be very challenging for students. However, no generalization can be made on articleship training as there are many students who have scored All India Ranks in spite of taking rigorous articleship training.
What is required to become a CA?
CA is not at all difficult for those who are willing to invest their time and give up something. Let us talk about both the points elaborately.
1. Invest your time:
CA is just like your girlfriend who demands more time from you for being happy. This means that the more time you invest and attention you pay is directly proportional to your own happiness. As you gather a lot of information about likes and dislikes of your girlfriend, you need to do same with CA. You should research and plan things accordingly to get great dividends.
2. Give up somethings:
The weirdest thing about CA is that once you enroll in it, you need to stop somewhere in your lifestyle. This takes away directly 5 years of your life. You should persevere for some time to get greater benefits.
Should you pursue CA?
The most important thing for pursuing CA is love for the subject. You should have passion to do well in your particular stream as it becomes your identity. The most essential thing for doing CA is getting support of your loved ones. The CA papers are such that only a person with absolute conceptual clarity can solve it.
If you are a working individual then you are going to have a tough time for getting leaves for studies. The syllabus of CA is very huge and it is only half the text books. The total syllabus is much more than just text books. While studying, your place can just be covered with books all over. ICAI demands expert level knowledge from all the candidates who are appearing for the exam.
Experts should have working knowledge, theory and its application to make a serious impression on people. Also, there is lots of social and relatives pressure on you and they cause just nuisance as they are more interested in the number of attempts and marks obtained than clearing of exams. Just ignore such people and concentrate more on your goals.
Unlike like any other course, if an individual fails to clear one subject, he needs to give exams of whole level again and this may become very painful at times. All the CA students need a lot of mental strength and hard work to clear this exam as the exams are very tough. Just work hard and achieve your goal.