Graduates of the NIU Certified Public Accountant Review Program ranked among the top 10 universities nationwide for their pass rate on the Uniform Certified Public Accountant’s Exam.

They were ranked against about 900 schools. NIU, which tied for ninth place with the University of Montana overall, was rated fifth best in the nation on the auditing section of the exam, said Debra Hopkins, director of the NIU CPA Review and an accountancy professor.

Though this is NIU’s 15th time ranking in the top 10, Hopkins said it is an honor because it is the first time NIU has been the only Illinois university to be in the ranking. In previous years, NIU has been joined in the top 10 by the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.

The last test included in this ranking took place in May 2003, but the rankings were not announced until the middle of March this year, Hopkins said. Rankings were printed in the 2004 edition of the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy booklet.

Hopkins said the reason why test results were not printed until recently was because of the change in test format. This was the last test to be taken in pencil and paper format, as they are now computerized, she said.

There are four different sections to the test: auditing; financial accounting and reporting; accounting and reporting-regulation; and business environment and concepts-business law. For all four sections, the course takes about four months to complete, Hopkins said. In 2005, there are 21 course offerings available and several course offerings starting each month, she said. It costs about $1,800 to sign up for all four sections of the exam.

Hopkins said more than 1,000 students took the review, but only 13 students took the test, which was over two days and 15 1/2 hours long.

“The test was extremely difficult,” said Shyree Sanon, a former NIU accountancy graduate, licensed CPA and a business administrative associate in research and graduate studies at NIU. “I couldn’t ask for anything more from [the NIU CPA program faculty] to prepare me for the exam. If I didn’t get the score I wanted on the test, I knew it was because I didn’t put enough effort into studying because all the information on the test was there in the [NIU] CPA Review Program.”

Sanon was one of the 13 graduate students to take and pass the exam in 2003.

Jamil Kanan, a senior financial analyst for Caterpillar Co. in Aurora, said the CPA Review Program completely prepared him for the 2003 test.

Kanan, who graduated from NIU in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting science, said he passed all four parts of the test the first time after taking the review program.

“I really want to stress how thrilled I am that our students have done so well because no program can take the test for them,” Hopkins said. “We have a very strong accounting tradition at Northern and we are very proud that our students keep that long-running tradition going.”