Robert Dornan will become one of the last certified public accountants in New York state to have completed only 120 credit hours of coursework.

The rules have changed for CPAs. As of Aug. 1, licensure in New York requires 150 completed credit hours.

May 2009 graduates with bachelor's degrees in accounting, including Dornan, rushed to meet the application deadline.

"I was prepared," said Dornan, a recent Niagara University graduate. "But I was at a national accounting boards meeting in Indianapolis ... and a lot of students said they had a lot of difficulty in applying because they didn't know much about it."

Dornan said he had to submit his application for certification by Aug. 1 in order to be grandfathered in under the 120-hour requirement. Once a student is approved, he or she can register for each part of the four-part Uniform CPA Examination.

Students with 120 credit hours under their belt did not have to complete the exam by Aug. 1. They simply had to submit an application.

Dornan registered for the first part of the exam, which he will have completed when he begins his job with PricewaterhouseCoopers in September. Before he receives his CPA license, he must pass all four parts of the exam and get two years worth of supervised experience with PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Those who complete the 150-hour requirement must undergo one year of supervised experience prior to licensure.

According to Susan Anders, New York is one of the last states to require 150 credit hours to become a licensed CPA. However, students can start taking the exam after completing 120 credit hours.

While the Uniform CPA Examination is a national exam, individual state boards of accountancy govern the rules on who can sit for the exam, said Anders, a professor of accounting at St. Bonaventure University.

Schools have been preparing for the transition since 1998, when the state government first enacted the law, according to an article published by the New York State Society of CPAs.

Area schools such as St. Bonaventure and Niagara University have a five-year BBA/MBA program. The University at Buffalo offers a four-year bachelor of science and a one-year master of science in accounting.

According to Patricia Hartman of the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, the number of CPA candidates registering for the exam in New York state rose from 5,326 in 2006 to 7,966 in 2008. Area educators remain confident those numbers will continue to climb and enrollment in CPA-track accounting programs will remain steady, despite the extra 30-credit requirement.

Ann Burstein Cohen, associate professor of accounting at UB, said because New York is one of the last states to implement this requirement, schools shouldn't see a drop in enrollment.

"Talking to colleagues who work in other states, some of them felt there was some drop-off, but then they came back up. It's more of a transition," she said.

Shannon Holfoth is a Buffalo Law Journal contributor.