Counting on a great year: Meet the Masters in Accounting Class of 2018

By Stephanie Skordas, Sr. Associate Director, Communications

“The employment opportunities are bar none, at least in my opinion,” said Janelle Lewis (MSA ’18) who also cited the #1 CPA pass rate as her top reasons for coming to Wake Forest University School of Business. “The opportunity to study for the CPA exam while being a student rather than a full-time employee is a big plus, and probably can help account for the excellent CPA pass rate.”

The 108 students in the Masters in Accounting (MSA) program represent 56 colleges and 12 undergraduate majors. A week of orientation activities August 22-25, 2017 helped them get to know their classmates, professors, and staff members better while also preparing them for the busy fall recruiting season.

Lewis comes to Wake Forest with a background in the restaurant industry. After graduating from college in 2011, she went to culinary school and embarked on a career in food service.  While she loved creating amazing dishes, she found the business side even more to her taste. “Accounting, even though it’s money and numbers; those numbers tell you so much about the health and wellbeing of a company.”

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Julian McClellan (MSA ’18) said he was looking for a challenge when he decided to focus on a career in public accounting. “There’s never a dull day. I was looking for a program that would launch me directly into advisory, and Wake Forest allows that through the Financial Transactions Services track.”

Celine Olcott (BS ’17, MSA ’18) knew she wanted to come to Wake Forest and join the MSA program as a high school senior. “When I was looking at colleges, I wanted to go to a school with a rigorously academic accounting program. Growing up, I loved math, and when I took my first accounting class, I loved the puzzle aspect of it.” With an internship at PwC under her belt, she plans to continue her career in transaction services with PwC in their deals department in New York City after graduation.

“What attracted me most to Wake Forest was the personal touch,” Lewis said. “Even before I was an admitted student, the folks at Wake Forest were approachable and related to me so well. They made me feel I was important to them and a person who was worthy of knowing, not just a number. That just lets me know how they’re going to take care of me for the next three semesters.”