Questions
Answers, at the Length the Question Deserves
The questions we get by email, answered the way we would answer them by email.
Can I sit for the U.S. CPA exam with a degree from my own country?
Very often, yes. U.S. jurisdictions accept foreign education provided it is assessed by an approved evaluation service and your study meets that jurisdiction's requirements. The question is almost never 'is my degree foreign', it is how much of your study is counted as accounting, how much as business, and whether your qualification is treated as degree-equivalent. Those are questions about your transcript.
Do I need 150 credit hours?
Not necessarily, and considerably less often than you would think from reading around online. Education requirements have changed substantially across the U.S. in the last two years, and several routes now exist that did not before. Whether a particular route is open to you depends on your own record, which is what a review establishes.
Do I need a Social Security Number or a U.S. visa?
Not to sit for the exam. Requirements around identity documents differ by jurisdiction and between sitting the exam and being licensed afterwards, and for candidates without U.S. documents this is one of the factors that decides which route makes sense. It is a solvable problem, and a common one, most of the people we work with are in exactly this position.
What does the free check tell me?
Whether your education looks like it already meets a U.S. route, whether you are close, or whether you would need further study first. It is a general read, computed in your browser from figures you type, and it is deliberately not a determination, it will not tell you which jurisdiction to apply to or exactly what is missing, because both turn on how your individual courses are classified. That requires reading your transcript.
Why won't you just publish the requirements?
Because published thresholds are the easiest thing in this field to read correctly and still get wrong, and because acting on a self-assessment is how candidates end up paying for the wrong evaluation. Two people with identical credit totals routinely land on opposite sides of the same requirement, depending on how their courses are classified. We would rather look at your documents than have you make an expensive decision from a table.
What is a credential evaluation and do I have to pay for it?
An approved service converts your foreign transcript into U.S. terms and sorts your courses into the categories a board acts on. Foreign education has to be assessed this way before a board will consider it, and it typically costs a few hundred dollars paid to the evaluator, not to us, we earn nothing from it. Our review comes first so that you buy the right one, once. Ordering an evaluation before deciding where to apply is the most common expensive mistake we see.
How long does your review take?
Two business days. We are a small, email-only practice, which means we quote a turnaround we can keep rather than promising an instant answer at midnight.
What if your review is wrong?
Then you get your money back. If we recommend a jurisdiction and you turn out not to be eligible there, we refund the fee. We do not publish a success rate, because no one can honestly promise you an outcome a state board controls, but we can stand behind our own reading of your transcript, and the refund is how we do that.
I hold ACCA. Does that count?
Ask us before assuming it does. ACCA is the qualification most often misunderstood in this process, and candidates regularly arrive having planned years around an assumption that does not hold. The circumstances in which it helps are narrow and depend on your particular route through it. This one is genuinely worth an email before you commit to anything further.
I'm not an accounting major. Is there any point?
Often, yes. Requirements vary in what they ask for, and some routes are considerably more accommodating to business, finance and economics graduates than candidates assume. Whether one of them fits you depends on your record.
My transcript shows marks, not credit hours. Is that a problem?
No, and it is the most common thing we see. Indian and Pakistani marksheets almost never show credit hours. Study is converted from the structure and duration of the programme, not read off the page. Anyone telling you your transcript is unusable for this reason is mistaken.
Are you connected to Becker?
Yes, and we disclose it. We are an official Becker CPA Review partner, which lets us offer a substantial discount on their courses and means we earn a commission if you enrol through us. It has no bearing on the advice, our recommendation is about your education, not your exam preparation.
Something not covered? Email info@cpaeligible.com. Questions are free and we do not treat them as leads.