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Is Anyone Surprised That Becker Swept The Elijah Watt Sells Winners?

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

This press release should come as a surprise to absolutely no one:

Becker Professional Education, a global leader in professional education and a part of DeVry Inc., announced that all 19 of the 2010 Elijah Watt Sells Award winners prepared for the exam with Becker's CPA Exam Review. Since the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) began recognizing the Elijah Watt Sells Award recipients nationally in 2005, a remarkable 89 percent of the winners, 66 of 74, have studied with Becker's CPA Exam Review.

The Elijah Watt Sells Award, first awarded by AICPA in 1923 to honor CPA pioneer Elijah Watt Sells, is presented to the 10 CPA candidates, who, on their first attempt, achieve the highest cumulative scores for all four sections of the Uniform CPA Examination. In 2010 several candidates received identical cumulative scores, resulting in ties and increasing the number of award recipients to 19.

"We would like to congratulate these outstanding candidates for their achievement," said John Roselli, president of Becker Professional Education. "We recognize the hard work required to earn the CPA credential, and we are honored that so many of the nation's top students have turned to Becker to help them achieve their goals."

In case you missed it, all 19 winners can be found here. Or anywhere on the Internet for that matter.

Now, on the off chance any of the Elijah Watt Sells Award overachievers actually read this website, I would love to find out which, if any, of the winners actually bought Becker with their own money. It's known Becker has deals with Ernst & Young, PwC and Deloitte but what about the smaller firms? I doubt Becker has an exclusive deal with Exacta Aerospace in Wichita, Kansas but I could be wrong (and have been before). I know for a fact KPMG uses a different CPA review course (unless that's changed since I stopped spying on other review courses for work purposes) but since none of their folks made the Watt Sells list, that's neither here nor there.

So, if you winners are out there, hollatcha girl, eh?

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Anyway, on to the CPA exam. We’re heading into the last day of the year and I have got to say, you bastards have me overdosing on Red Bull just to keep up. I’m not sure what happened this year but it feels like a lot of you got fed up with dragging your asses along on this exam. Or maybe you got laid off and all the sudden had a whole bunch of time to study. I’m guessing a lot of you finally realized for the first time in your careers that you can’t coast forever.
I talked to a lot of you this year. A LOT. So many that I’m about ready to crawl into bed for the next 72 hours (after we make the last day of the year, of course) and hibernate. Where did all of you come from? Why now?


Whatever inspired this surge in interest in those three letters, I have to say I saw a lot of inspirational shit go down in CPA exam land. Like the guy with a learning disability who finished in a year using both a full review and a supplement each time. Guess what? CPA. Or the student who put this off for so long she couldn’t believe she was that old sitting in that chair taking that test she’d dreaded for 15 years since college. She failed miserably the first time around, walking in there convinced she would.
The Self Fulfilling Prophesy candidate probably makes up 15% of our student base (I’m making that number up) and takes a little extra encouragement to pass. The second time around, she went in there and got through the exams. Now she just needs to find a job.
And that’s our other student. My Firm is Paying for This guy doesn’t realize that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, nor that there’s a bonus in it for him if he can just pass. Hell, they bought his ticket in. But they also worked him into the ground and he never studied on account of always being “too busy”. He’s got lots of time to study now that he’s laid off but his materials are outdated and useless. Too bad.
Wherever they come from, whomever pays for them to get there, this was sort of the year for the CPA exam. Or maybe the AICPA just scared everyone shitless with that IFRS threat and that’s why everyone is scrambling to take this exam and get it over with. Whatever works, I’m okay with it. I keep a case of Red Bull under the sink in the office.

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