Attending one of the best schools for Big 4 recruitment can make getting Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, or E&Y much easier. We’ve done the research and pulled together what we think is a great list of schools to consider to start your accounting career with a Big 4 firm.
Landing a Big 4 job (KPMG, Deloitte, E&Y, or PWC) straight out of school is a huge achievement – it promises you a respected name on your resume to start your career, an excellent training environment, and strong opportunities in the future. Getting into these firms requires good grades and a polished interview style, but it also helps to be from one of the main “feeder” schools that the Big 4 use frequently to find top candidates.
In general, the larger schools are best schools for big 4 recruitment. It isn’t that these schools are inherently better at accounting education (although they are obviously very good), but it is more a question of economics. E&Y, KPMG, Deloitte, and PWC all have to recruit an army of new graduates each year and it’s easier for them to do this through a couple of good, large schools rather than canvassing the country to visit each of the smaller accounting programs. The Big 4 will certainly consider applications from students that are not out of one of their large feeder campuses, but you’ll just have to work a bit harder to get noticed and won’t be automatically swept up in their regular recruiting cycle.
If you are part of a smaller school, or one not on the regular recruiting rounds for the Big 4, one of your best bets will be to work your own network to get noticed by a recruiter. The best avenue is ideally to find someone who already works at E&Y, KPMG, Deloitte, or PWC that might be interested in helping you. Use LinkedIn to find people who graduated from your school and made it into one of the Big 4. Failing that, you can even try someone from your hometown who now works there. Many of the Big 4 firms pay recruiting bonuses to people on the inside who help find good talent so you’ll be surprised how willing your loose contacts will be to help you!
Turning back to the best schools for big 4 recruitment, we’ve put together the list below based on LinkedIn recommendations. LinkedIn uses their own data to understand what schools lead to careers in which companies and this list is a sample of the schools it recommends for Big 4 careers. You’ll see that it’s mostly larger programs, aligning with the message above. Use this as a guide when picking your school and then jump on over to our college search to find programs in your area.
The Best Schools for Big 4 Recruitment (as recommended by LinkedIn):
- University of Southern California
- University of Notre Dame
- Texas A&M University
- Michigan State University
- University of Illinois
- Indiana University
- Brigham Young University
- The University of Texas at Austin
- University of Florida
- Bentley University
Remember, these schools are not the final list! There are lots of ways to get into these firms and the first step is great grades. Good luck!