Program Director: Katherine Gunny
E-mail: Katherine.Gunny@ucdenver.edu

Introduction

Whether you are considering licensure as a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) or just interested in accelerating your accounting career, a Master of Science in Accounting will help you achieve your goals. The coursework gives students the technical accounting competencies and critical thinking skills necessary to support a successful career in all accounting areas including public accounting, industry, not-for-profit, government, or tax.

We offer a 4+1 program that allows our current undergraduate accounting students to pursue the Master of Science degree without taking the GMAT, if they achieve a cumulative GPA of 3.00 or higher in the Intermediate series (ACCT 3220 Intermediate Financial Accounting I, ACCT 3230 Intermediate Financial Accounting II, and ACCT 3320 Cost Analytics). Students are also allowed to replace two undergraduate required accounting courses with two graduate accounting courses. If you are interested, please contact the Business School Advising team.

The MS Accounting degree consists of 30 required hours + 9 hours of prerequisites that may be waived based on prior coursework.

Accounting Prerequisites: (9 Hours)

The MS in accounting requires completion of the following accounting prerequisites; however, these prerequisites can be completed at CU Denver after admission into the program. They do not need to be completed before admission. 

Required Prerequisite Courses (advisor will evaluate transcript for possible waivers; grades must be a C or higher to be considered for possible waiver):

Course List

Code	Title	Hours
Required Prerequisite Courses
ACCT 6031	Intermediate Financial Accounting I 1	3
ACCT 6032	Intermediate Financial Accounting II 2	3
ACCT 6140	Fundamentals of Federal Income Tax 3	3
Total Hours		9

¹

Equivalent undergraduate course: ACCT 3220 Intermediate Financial Accounting I

²

Equivalent undergraduate course: ACCT 3230 Intermediate Financial Accounting II

³

Equivalent undergraduate course: ACCT 4410 Fundamentals of Federal Income Tax

 Accounting Core: (21 Hours)

Students may not receive graduate credit for undergraduate coursework and may not retake any course successfully completed at the undergraduate level with a grade of "C" or better. An advisor will evaluate prior coursework to determine possible substitutions.

Course List

Code	Title	Hours
ACCT 6020	Auditing Theory	3
ACCT 6054	Accounting Information Systems	3
ACCT 6150	Taxation of Business Entities	3
ACCT 6250	Seminar: Financial Accounting	3
ACCT 6260	Managerial Analytics for Accountants	3
ACCT 6280	Accounting Ethics	3
ACCT 6620	Advanced Auditing and other Assurance Services	3
Total Hours		21

Accounting Electives: (9 Hours)

Choose three from the following courses (unless otherwise noted, all courses are 3 credit hours):

Course List

Code	Title	Hours
Select three of the following:		9
Any ACCT 6000 course or higher
ACCT 5939	Internship
ACCT 6024	Advanced Financial Accounting
ACCT 6080	Accounting for Government and Not-for-profit Organizations
ACCT 6285	Accounting and Finance for Sustainability
ACCT 6330	Fraud Auditing
ACCT 6340	Financial Statement Analysis
ACCT 6370	International Accounting
ACCT 6400	Taxation of C Corporations and Shareholders
ACCT 6450	Tax Research
ACCT 6480	Partnership Taxation
ACCT 6510	Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence for Accountants
ACCT 6520	Oil and Gas Accounting and Sustainability
Total Hours		9

Note

Some courses in the MS Accounting program require the use of business applications (such as Microsoft Power BI or Alteryx) that are optimized for the Windows operating system. To ensure a seamless learning experience, MS Accounting students are strongly advised to have access to a computer that runs the Windows operating system. Students using computers with the MAC operating system will be responsible for modifying their operating system so that it can run the required business applications for the course.