Everyone hates an auditor. It’s just a fact of life. If someone asks you what you do for a living and you respond with, «Oh, I’m an accountant…», you probably won’t get much of a response. Maybe a «That sounds like fuuuunnn… not.» or «You must like numbers, huh!» but none of those responses are out of the ordinary. Now, if you respond to that same question with«Oh, I’m an auditor…», what you will hear in response are groans of pain and faces grimacing with disgust. When people think of auditors, they think of the IRS. They think of annoying people who come into their offices and ask for receipts from five years ago and expect them to appear out of thin air in minutes. No one likes an auditor. But, to become one of these hated people, takes A LOT of work and MANY certification tests. Enter Becker CPA. Becker CPA is a national CPA review course that offers classes both live at locations or for self study to help people like me, poor innocent souls, become *GASP!* an auditor. The nice thing about Becker is they have live classes at a number of locations like UCLA. Something even better about the UCLA location is that, unlike some locations where they just stick in a pretaped lecture CD into a DVD player and have you sit and watch(which you could honestly do on your own in the comfort of your own home), at UCLA, they actually hire UCLA or USC professors to teach these review courses. This helps immensely — you get to hear it from an actual person whose occupation is to teach accounting material and knows first hand how to make this information interesting enough to stick in your brain. Now, none of these classes are cheap but if you’re already attempting to be a CPA, chances are, you’re already working for an accounting firm. Most of the large firms(and even some of the small ones) will pay for classes to get you certified. But, if you’re doing this on your own, be prepared to drop some dough on classes. Honestly though, from first hand experience, if you go to these classes, pay attention to the teachers and study on your own, you’ll definitely be prepared to take your CPA tests.
