Can I study CA after +2 science? It is one of the most frequent questions we receive in our webinars and career guidance sessions. In this article, we will try to give you a detailed view about the question.
Technically you can study CA with a science background, The eligibility for CA Foundation is +2 and with a Degree from any of the accredited universities in India, you can study for the intermediate. So The questions about eligibility is not that something to be concerned with while you are thinking about CA.
Now all the concerns are about how the science students can cope up with something that they don’t have much exposure to. To understand the matter well we spoke to someone coming from the same science background, CA Anu Jose from JAKS Associates.
She is a Chartered Accountant who came from a science background, now with more than 12 years of experience in public accounting and consulting. She is also an IFRS-certified professional from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). Her experience varies from working with one of the Big four accounting firms to independent practice.
“I came to this due to the insistence of my parents. I wasn’t interested at all and was resistant to the idea but soon things changed, A spark happened and I started finding it interesting. Everything changed from there.”
One thing we understood from her is that she was not at all interested in CA in the beginning. She repeated several times about the spark that happened with her while doing the course, for her, that changes everything. She says, “for every subject, we need to find the bolts. Once you open those, knowledge is plenty and things will fall in the right places.”
She gives the example of how she got her grip on Accounting. Accounting was a little tough for me, especially that I had no prior idea about it since coming from a science background, there were so many complicated words like a mercantile system of accounting, accounting standard, etc. But for me, accounting is nothing but debit and credit. It was, It is and it will be these two fundamental things forever. Whatever you learn in accounting, you need to have this idea rooted in your mind.
Though she says it lightly, She insists on hard work, focus, persistence, and passion the basics right. Her mantra is to successfully deal with the exams. She explains each of those aspects here with how it can help your journey.
Hard work
There is no substitute for hard work, regardless of which stream you are coming from. The process of becoming a CA demands hard work. The topics might seem hard, there will be some days where you are not able to comprehend the concepts easily but the only way you can get ahead on your journey is by putting in more time and adding more effort to understand things.
Focus
Some people are so bright, they might understand things, maybe be able to reflect on it whenever it is needed but for normal people, especially if you are studying CA from a different background, the only thing you can do to clear the exams is by being focused. You need dedication but also need to be thoroughly focused, there is no other way, there are no shortcuts and bypasses.
Persistence
You will face hurdles that’s certain, there were moments in my journey where I believed I couldn’t take it anymore, Once I even gave up CA, I was depressed and thought it’s all done and dusted about CA but soon I came back to the mold again, It was only because I was persistence, I had a goal and I wanted it at any cost. There were failures but I was glad that I continued the journey.
Passion
None of the above-mentioned things are gonna happen if you don’t have passion. As I mentioned, my journey was not smooth, I didn’t start my CA studies because of interest, so it took me some time, gradually my resistance became acceptance and slowly the passion developed.
Her final advice was about structuring the exam preparation. Her logic is simple: we get 3 hours for an exam which we might have prepared for months and an examiner only takes 3-4 minutes to evaluate your paper. So along with learning the profession, you also need to prepare from an exam point of view. Practice on old question papers, write them down, and answer it on paper. Get used to the questions and patterns, work on structuring the answers and presentation.
