(UPDATE) Which School Tops U.S. News Rankings in Undergrad Accounting?
Ed. note: U.S. News and World Report has issued a correction, stating they "incorrectly loaded peer reputation scores." The corrected ranking may be found below. Sorry, University of Illinois! RANKINGS. Love them or hate them, how else are we supposed to know who we're better than? The 30th edition of U.S. News and World Report […]
Master’s in Accounting Grads Becoming More Popular With Employers
According to the latest AICPA Trends in the Supply of Accounting Graduates and the Demand for Public Accounting Recruits report (2013), demand for accounting grads is up. But we knew that. Also according to the report, demand for accounting grads with master's degrees is up. We knew that as well but did we know just […]
Congratulations, Your Job is the Third Best Job in Business (Allegedly)
Oh yippee, another arbitrary decision to slap "accountant" on a best of list! Except this one comes courtesy U.S. News & World Report so you should probably give it slightly more weight than some hack Yahoo list written by a freelancer making half a cent a word: Were you the kid who always made straight […]
Let’s *Try* to Have a Civil Discussion About Accounting Program Rankings
Every year, U.S. News & World Report bestows their storied list of best Colleges and Universities. It's a great opportunity to show school pride (unless you're a Penn State alum) or to make snide remarks because you went to a TTT and are mad with envy. Because we know that discussing loaded rankings such as […]
Let’s Bicker About the U.S. News Accounting Program Rankings
Wow — Texas, Illinois, BYU are the top three? No one saw this coming.
1. Texas – Austin
2. Illinois – Urbana-Champaign
3. BYU
4. Southern Cal
5. Michigan
6. Penn
7. Notre Dame
8. Indiana
9. NYU
10. Ohio St, Washington (tie)
Not exactly sure if Michigan jumped over Notre Dame at the last second in this year’s ranking but I’d like to imagine a flurry of points coming in late to catapult the Wolverines over ND. Sorry, John. Btw, here’s the methodology if you’re into that sort of thing.
KPMG, Ernst & Young Sneak on to U.S. News Tax Firm Ranking
You may or may not be aware that U.S. News & World Report is the shot caller when it comes to ranking law schools (much to the chagrin of some) and now (to even more chagrin) the magazine is delving into extensive law firm rankings and the Big 4 will enjoy a little bit of perceived prestige that comes along with these rankings.
Christ. We’re barely into rankings/list season and they’ve already chalked up working moms and consulting rankings and U.S. News is now throwing around its weight with this new list.
Granted, virtually no accounting firms will even get a whiff of this list but something tells us that because U.S. News has decided to dive head first into ranking law firms by practice are the Big 4 will be jockeying to make the tax list, even though it is a sliver of a much larger and broader ranking that they won’t be included on at all.
Excuse us while we choke down the vomit that we caught making it’s way out.
Why the hell not?!? U.S. News figured that the world couldn’t do without it’s rankings-for-hire in one more area for the legal field but this time the Big 4 will enjoy a bit of a ride on this wave.
Right. The list. The two of Big Four of course, make their way on the ranking for tax firms: Ernst & Young falls into the coveted Tier 1 (includes 36 firms) and KPMG drops on Tier 2 (47 firms). There were a total out of 119 firms across three tiers.
Admittedly, this is an opportunity for both KPMG and E&Y to boast their tax practice prowess over Deloitte and PwC who don’t appear on the list at all. That being said, Deloitte and PwC enjoy higher spots on the consulting rankings so they’re probably not overly concerned although no one turns down a notch on the bedpost if they can get it.
What this new ranking ultimately will be is one more marketing tool for the firms to use on the impressionable recruits and experienced hires who want to work in top notch – TOP NOTCH! – tax practice. Be it lawyers or CPAs, the firms will tout this ranking to their tax professionals (if not firm-wide) to throw around ONE. MORE. LIST. to impress the trousers off the masses but now people will be saying, “Oh, this is a U.S. News ranking.”
So for the Big 4 to be included in this “prestigious” ranking is a little bit, as Elie Mystal states, like “Christmas morning – if only Santa were a jolly red prestige whore.”
U.S. News Tax Firm Rankings [TaxProf Blog]
Best Law Firms [U.S. News & World Report]
U.S. News Launches First Official Law Firm Rankings [ATL]