[Anonymous]

I’m extremely frustrated. My story….

I graduated with my bachelors in Accounting in 2012 and finally found the determination to sit for the CPA exam in Illinois this spring. I submitted my transcripts, paid the fee, and was told in early May that I did not satisfy their new rules for ethics and research and analysis in addition to their 30 accounting and 24 business credits (or whatever it is). I reached out to my school for assistance and they submitted a template for the Illinois Board of Examiners to use to reevaluate my credits. They eventually gave me some credit, but still not enough to satisfy their credits to take the exam. This whole process took 3 months to learn that I still didn’t qualify. I met every other requirement, but I’m short 1 Research credit and 3 ethics credits. I was absolutely sure I had all of that taken care of too.

So, I’m writing for advice on how to proceed. Do I try to find courses at a local college to satisfy these requirements and spend an extra $1,000+ for those college credits which will be a joke? Or can I sit for the exam in another state and only pay the $345 fee to have my license transferred? How easy/messy is that?

Has anyone been in the same boat and have any experience or creative solutions? I’m so unbelievably frustrated at the 3 months and $175 application fee lost for the time being. I just want to start studying and cracking out 75s sooner than later so I can get my career moving along!

[Anonymous]

Great info, beat_counter! I'm jumping on it today!

[Anonymous]

Beat_counter – thank you SO much for providing the link to the template for Oakton. From there I saw my own schools recently submitted template and noticed that all the coursework they listed to satisfy their ethics and research credits I had taken!! I reached out to the board of examiners this morning and it was determined that there was an error on my last evaluation and that I HAVE met all requirements to take the exam!! I'm waiting for the official go ahead to be sent later this week. Talk about a huge relief!! Some careless reviewer about cost me a lot of money and time. So glad I brought it up here.

[Jamie79]

To the Kansas person – question for you. I know someone who was denied the ability to sit for the exam by KS (because KS wanted them to take 2 more speech/communications classes, which is ridiculous). Tried to get the board to waive the requirements, were denied. They're sitting for another state's exam. I was interested in what you said above about IL – that people in KS take the IL one to get around KS's stupid requirements. Can you later waive easily into KS, once admitted into another state?

[impska]

Illinois lets you get licensed without living or working there. So once you satisfy the IL experience requirement (which is one year), you can transfer your license into KS.

But if you want to transfer your scores to KS, you need to have all of the KS requirements meant. Usually the reason that people sit in IL is that you can sit much sooner in IL (as a provisional candidate, before actually graduating). So people sit in IL while concurrently finishing the KS requirements and then switch the scores over.

If your friend really doesn't want to take those two classes, then getting licenced in another state and transfering the full license over works fine. Or, if your friend wants to get started on the exam and is planning on finishing those classes, she can start sitting in another state and just transfer over the scores to KS when she finishes the classes.

I'm not surprised the waiver got denied. The KS Board has a specific policy of denying the Coms waiver. I guess too many people ask for it.

I know a few people who have transferred licenses from other states due to the KS requirements and never heard of any problems. I, personally, finished the requirements and transferred BEC and REG from IL to KS and am sitting for FAR and AUD in KS and will be licensed in KS.

REG - 94
BEC - 92
FAR - 92
AUD - 99

[Jamie79]

impska: That's exactly what they're doing. They're taking the OH exam (OH will let them sit for it, and they're well into taking it – they've taken 2 parts) and getting a OH license. After they're completely licensed in OH, they were going to look into seeing about having KS also license them, using the then-standing OH license as the way in. They've been out of school for 15 years and not really in the mood to take entry-level English (and, without getting too far into it, they meet the requirements, but the KS board didn't want to give them credit for courses taken at an out of state school due to a difference in the way the course names read and an unwillingness to look at curricular information which shows they're the same course as KU/KSU offers. They were sort of rude about the whole thing and seemed very disinclined to even look at someone coming from out of state, which might be part of KS's problem these days, but I digress…).

If I'm reading your response right, this will ultimately work. KS will give a license to an already-licensed OH CPA. Is that right?

[winslow16]

I took the two hour research class at Oakton online. If you take the online class you get the in district rate. I had application fee of $25 and the course cost me around $270. If I remember correctly the book did not cost over $30. It was a good course and it went by quick because it was 8 weeks.

I did have to go to campus once for the course. The course that I took required you to register to use tax research software. To create an account you had to do so from an Oakton IP address in the computer lab. Not sure if your class will be the same, but keep in mind that you may have to visit campus one day to register for software.

[Author]

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