CFA with no accounting background

Hello Guys, I have been going through CFA materials and I plan to take it on this June. I encountered with one of my finance professors today with whom I was taking finance elective class called “Financial management”. Since the Financial Management course required a perquisite class called “Accounting 101” he hesitated to sign me in for that class. ( I never took any accounting class since I am a mathematics major with economics minor) So i told him that “I am preparing for CFA exams so I think I would be able to manage it” and then he goes “Wait you are planning to CFA exams and you havent had any accounting background”. Then he started how tough it would be for me to pass CFA exams if i have no accounting background and basically he said I cant do it on my own. But I thought one can manage on your own to prepare for CFA exams. Am I getting something wrong over here or he is just scaring me here. Is Accounting section (Financial reporting and analysis) that bad for CFA level I that any student with no accounting background will have to go through a lot of struggling.

a lot of people have passed all the cfa exams without any background in accounting, or business for that matter. accounting really does not have much in common with math. math makes sense. accounting is mostly a bunch of rules one has to follow. you will find it boring and challenging at the same time, but it’s certainly doable.

First off, CFA requires financial statement analysis which is only a part of accounting. You can get a CFA Charter and not know how to do a journal entry for the cash sale of a pencil. Lots of the stuff you learn in Accounting 101 relates to things like that more than accounting for unconsolidated subsidiaries and similar that you learn for CFA. They don’t overlap as much as you seem to believe (I’m definitely not saying you can’t learn Accounting 101 on your own). Second, tons of people with no accounting background take and pass CFA exams with no accounting background. For example, me. There really is nothing terribly difficult about any of the FSA; there is just tons of it. You just start early and keep chugging away at it,

Don’t let someone tell you what you can or can’t do. This guys is just being an ignorant dolt and trying to scare you. Yes, having accounting is a huge help. But, there are PLENTY of people on this forum that will testify to the fact that they had ZERO finance/accounting backgrounds before they started the CFA program. It makes it more difficult, yes. But, just set aside the extra time now that you know you will need to take more time with accounting. Accounting is nothing more than memorizing rules. It’s a pain in the ass and confusing, so it just takes practice.

I didn’t have any finance or accounting background and I was able to pass Level I in first attempt. I think you should not bother that much about this lacking as you are among innumerable candidates who do not have accounting background. I took it the other way round by taking FRA not only as a challenge but as an opportunity to learn something from the scratch. As I didn’t have any prior knowledge, I was not having any ‘set’ standards or benchmark to compare what I was studying in the CFA with any old learning or knowledge regarding finance. I have seen many candidates with finance background comparing what they learn in CFA with what they had learned before and then getting confused. Take it as an opportunity you’ll not only enjoy it but also learn it well.