An NIU accountancy professor said NIU might regain its national first rank status for the Certified Public Accountant exam overall passing rate.

NIU Accountancy Professor John Simon said the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy ranked NIU second in the nation for overall CPA test passing rates in May 1987 with a 54.9 percent passing rate. He said the University of Montana ranked first.

Simon said NIU ranked first in the May exams from 1983 to 1986. He said the association began compiling the results in 1985, but he has done research since 1983 that showed NIU’s standing.

“A problem we have always faced is that NASBA requires a school to have only 20 people taking the exam to qualify (for the NASBA ranking survey). A small school may just have a good year,” Simon said. In the May 1987 exam, the University of Montana had only 40 students testing while NIU had about 150 students, he said.

Simon said, “If I were to constitute a list of schools with 50 candidates or more, we (NIU) would still be number one.”

He said, “In the May of ‘88 exam, NIU had a 65 percent pass rate.

“Altough the (national) statistics won’t be out for another year, I think we’ll be back to number one,” Simon said.

John Smith, another NIU accountancy professor, said, “I think the results we had in May of ’88 are the best we’ve had all of the while or at least a long time.”

In the May 1988 exam, seven NIU students won Elijah Watts sells Awards for nationwide top performance, Simon said. NIU won 29 percent of the awards, he said.

“One institution having 29 percent of the awards is remarkable because we don’t have 29 percent of the students,” Simon said. “I believe we had more than any other state,” he said.

Smith said the reason for NIU’s outstanding national performance is a combination of the students, faculty and the NIU CPA Review Program.

Smith said, “We have a faculty that’s pretty well known across the country.”

He said, “One reason I was interested in coming to NIU was that the faculty has a mission for entering people into the accounting profession.”

NIU has one of the largest accountancy programs in the state, Smith said, and “it is important to service as many students as we can.”

Simon said the NIU accountancy faculty is “a great team with a lot of experience. We are a dedicated faculty that cares.”

He said students sense the faculty’s support and want to maintain NIU’s traditional high performance.

Karen Golick, an NIU graduate student, said NIU’s past success gave her confidence going into the exam. She said the national pass rate is about 18 percent for students taking the exam for the first time.