CPA to CPP?
Hey guys, I’m stuck with this dilemma and can’t decide what to do. A little self background: I have a bachelor’s in economics and a few years of experience in that field however got tired of it and applied for CPA program since I like coding (in the 2nd semester already). But the thing is I’d be glad to finish sooner which would be a huge relief both time and financial wise, and with CPP I can just be done with it after 4 semesters. Is it wise to switch to this program? Will I be able to find a job or get an internship after?
10 Replies
If you have a bachelors in economics, I think it's a very wise choice to switch to CPP. You already have higher education, the advanced diploma (CPA) versus diploma (CPP) will not strengthen your resume.
"Will I be able to find a job or internship after?"
CPA will not significantly help over CPP, even though there is a coop stream. Many CPA students don't get an internship during their time at Seneca, and some CPP students do. Your success in finding a job or internship is more a consequence of your work ethic and networking than it is CPA vs CPP. It's going to be difficult regardless of the program.
Disclaimer: I did CPP
If you can manage and plan it out well, in CPA there is 2 work terms so basically one year is work term and the other 4 is semesters, so its better that way, plus its advance diploma which will look better plus if you wanna transfer to a degree program you never know its easier to transfer, having a CPA,
How did you find your job? Was it a lot of work and sending out resumes, networking and all that?
I guess it has its advantages but I’m just trying to weigh my options based on my background, I heard a lot of students in the coop stream are struggling to find a job so I’m not really optimistic about it.
I mean even if you take CPP you will still bave hard time finding a job
Luck = Preparation meets opportunity. The preparation was my good resume with projects and my interview skills being sharp from interviewing multiple times. The opportunity was my high school buddy’s mom referring me for an opening on her team. Got the interview, nailed it and got the job.
I can assure you the “advanced diploma” would not have helped me then. Considering you have a freakin bachelors already what you are lacking is not formal education, but actual programming skills. You can acquire skills outside of school. Seneca CPP will get you to a good place to be competent enough to self learn the rest. If you look at job postings, most will accept Econ and Math degrees for programming jobs. Based on my experience and that of others I know, what you need is a strong resume (you need cool projects) and forcing opportunities via networking so you can get “lucky”.
Yeah I guess you’re right, it comes down to a lot of self learning and networking. Do you mind sharing what kind of projects are resume worthy? Are the recruiters looking for like a full stack project?
A lot of cpa students transfer to cpp after they get the coop. Seeing as how you have work experience you might not need the cpa experience. Plus you have a Bachelor’s so … your chances of finding a job is practically the same as CPA
That’s what I’m thinking too, I guess it all comes down to my own efforts and luck tbh
- The project should solve a problem for someone (can be just you). You should be able to articulate this problem and the solution your project offers.
- The larger the scope of the project the better. A tiny project that can be done in a weekend is not very impressive. Of course there is a realistic upper limit to this, a project that takes a decade is not realistic.
- The project should be relevant to the industry you're trying to break into. If you want to be a web developer do a web project. If you want to go into banking or capital markets, do a financial related project. If you want to go into automotive programming, do an embedded project. Research the domain of interest and figure out what tools and languages they use, and try to use them in your project.
- Find a way to make the project easily demonstrable to a non-technical person. Recruiters are usually not programmers, so you must be able to wow them and show off the project without requiring them to download, build, run software. Every project should have a way to visualize what it's doing, which is easy enough with web ones but more challenging for non-web projects. Command line programs are not flashy enough even if they do incredible things.
- If you can do something that's never been done before, great. But not all projects need to be new ideas, you can take an existing idea and put your own spin on it. An easy formula for project ideas is to identify software that annoys you (bad UI/UX, important feature missing, bad performance), and make your own version which solves the annoyance.
If you find a new job using CPP, I'll help you.
I have 6 years of programming experience.