Becoming a CPA
How to become a CPA
By Joey Arnold, CPA · Last updated August 24, 2026
Source: NASBA and AICPA Uniform Accountancy Act, current as of August 2026.
There are now three ways to qualify for a CPA license, not one.
If you learned the requirements before 2025 — or from a page written before 2025 — you learned that becoming a CPA means 150 credit hours, the exam, and a year of experience. That path still works. It’s no longer the only one.
What it takes, in three parts
Every route to a CPA license is built from the same three components: education, the exam, and experience. What changed is how they trade off against each other.
The license itself is issued by a state board of accountancy, not by the AICPA or NASBA. Those two bodies write model legislation; your state decides whether and when to adopt it. That distinction matters more now than it used to, and the next section is why.
Three ways to get there
| Pathway | Education | Experience | Exam |
|---|---|---|---|
| Graduate | Graduate degree in accounting | 1 year | Pass all four sections |
| Traditional | Bachelor’s in accounting + 30 additional semester credits (150 total) | 1 year | Pass all four sections |
| New | Bachelor’s in accounting (120 semester hours) | 2 years | Pass all four sections |
The exam requirement is identical across all three. Only the education-and-experience mix moves.
The trade is straightforward: the new pathway swaps a fifth year of tuition for a second year of paid work. For a lot of candidates that’s not a close call financially. For others — anyone who wants the master’s, anyone whose employer pays for it — the traditional route is still the better deal.
The third pathway is new, and it isn’t everywhere yet
AICPA and NASBA approved the model legislation in May 2025. But model legislation isn’t law. NASBA is explicit that individual jurisdictions must formally enact legislation to adopt the new models, and states are moving at their own pace.
So the honest answer to “can I do the 120-hour path?” is: it depends on your state, today. We don’t publish a list of which states have adopted it, because that list changes. Check the current status with NASBA and your own state board before you plan around it.
That’s also the single most important thing to confirm before you register for anything. State requirements →
If you move states, the rules just changed
Say you get licensed in one state and later want to work in another — or you stay put but work remotely for a firm based elsewhere. Whether your license lets you do that is called mobility, and how it’s decided just changed.
The old rule was about your states: if your home state’s standards were judged “substantially equivalent” to the other state’s, you were covered. If they weren’t, you had a problem.
The new rule is about you. Your mobility now depends on your own qualifications — your education, exam, and experience — not on how your home state compares to another. In plain terms, your license travels with your record.
If you might move, or you already work across state lines, it’s worth knowing the new rule instead of assuming the old one.
Where the exam fits
The exam is the one constant across all three pathways, and it’s the part you control entirely.
Four sections: three cores everyone takes — AUD, FAR and REG — plus one discipline you choose from BAR, ISC or TCP. Most candidates take twelve to eighteen months over the whole thing, though that varies enormously with how much you study and how much you’re working.
You don’t have to finish your education requirement before you sit. Many states let you test once you’re within a certain number of credits, which is why a lot of candidates start the exam while they’re still finishing school or in their first year of work.
Two decisions are worth making deliberately before you start: which section to sit first, and which discipline to pick. Both have better and worse answers, and both are easier to get right up front than to fix later. Which section first → · Choosing a discipline → · The full exam guide →
Where to start
Whichever pathway your state offers you, the exam is the same. Start there.
No credit card, full access to Chapter 1 of every section. All six sections — $1,249 · See what’s included.