When Overton Ragland (A&S ’20, M.S. in Accounting ’21) opened his McIntire admissions decision during his second year at UVA, the news wasn’t what he’d hoped for. Inspired by his grandfather, he’d wanted to become an accountant since childhood. Suddenly, the most obvious route to that career seemed closed. “I thought about transferring because I was unsure how to reach my goal of becoming a CPA,” he recalls.
Overton Ragland
Then he ran into McIntire Professor Katie McDermott on Grounds. At the time, there was no formal pathway for students outside the Commerce School to complete the accounting coursework they would need to apply for McIntire’s M.S. in Accounting program (MSA). McDermott encouraged him to speak with Andrea Roberts, then Director of the MSA program. Out of those conversations came something new: the Pathway program, launched in 2018, with Ragland as its very first student. He enrolled in McDermott’s Intermediate Accounting course that fall, went on to become a standout in his graduate courses, and today is an active alum who returns to the University to share his story with current students.
Dozens of students have followed him since. For UVA undergraduates who still feel called to the accounting profession after their initial plans change, the Pathway has become a second door; the students who walk through it tend to arrive at the same destination as everyone else, often with a few advantages of their own.
How the MSA Pathway Works
The concept is simple. Students in schools across Grounds complete introductory and intermediate accounting courses at McIntire alongside their chosen major. Those courses make them eligible to apply to the MSA, which prepares them for the CPA exam and careers in public accounting, consulting, and beyond. McDermott, who directs and advises the Pathway, calls it “a genuine win-win”: Students get the coursework they need, and the Accounting faculty get classrooms full of people who chose to be there.
Trinity Kelso
Getting started is refreshingly painless. Trinity Kelso, a 2025 MSA graduate who majored in Public Policy at the Batten School, learned about the Pathway from Professor Jill Mitchell and found it simple to map out a plan for success. “It was super straightforward,” she says of enrolling. “What I saw is what I got.”
Coco McLeod
For rising fourth-year Coco McLeod, the Pathway is where her confidence as an accountant took root. Mitchell pointed her toward the program just when she needed a new direction. After a rocky start with online introductory accounting courses, the intermediate sequence in the classroom was a much better fit. “The in-person learning changed a lot for me. I really owe it to her for continuing on the path, for sure,” McLeod says. Her strong performance in both classes confirmed she was headed in the right direction.
Advising that Accounts for Success
Ask Pathway students what makes the program work, and they keep landing on the same answer: the people guiding them. Daniel Hinz, who graduated with an Economics degree in May and starts the MSA this August, met with McDermott early and checked in with her periodically throughout his time studying at the College of Arts & Sciences. McDermott taught his first Intermediate Accounting class, wrote a recommendation for his master’s application, and became a reliable sounding board for everything from recruiting to accounting questions. With that support system in place, he never felt like he was navigating the process alone.
Daniel Hinz
That guidance pays practical dividends. Hinz spent this summer as an Audit Intern at KPMG, and his Pathway coursework supported him from the very start. The auditing course he took in the spring meant that during training, “I’d already heard all the concepts of the financial statement assertions,” he says, rather than feeling like he was playing catch-up.
The Best of Both Worlds
Abby Cicero
There’s an unexpected upside to the Pathway: Students get two academic lives instead of one. Abby Cicero, an Economics major starting the MSA this fall, explored Religious Studies and even Architecture in the College while building her accounting foundation at McIntire. “The Pathway program gave me an early introduction not only to accounting, but also to the collaborative culture of McIntire,” she says.
Ragland felt the same pull in both directions while earning his Economics and Statistics undergrad degrees. “I had my core classmates and friends within Econ and Stat, but then I also got to branch out and make friends within McIntire,” he says. “That diversity of mindset was really wonderful. It made my college experience unique.”
Where the Pathway Leads
Taylor West
The Pathway’s impact becomes clearest after graduation. Taylor West (A&S ’25, M.S. in Accounting ’26) interned at PwC in New York and returns there this August as an Audit Associate. But the transition from the Pathway to the MSA also gave him a close-knit community, one he helped build as president of his 53-person class. “I made an awesome group of friends in the MSA program,” he says, and the variety of backgrounds impressed him, including a classmate who arrived from UVA Chemical Engineering. “You get a variety of different majors, which I thought was pretty cool.”
Kelso now works in financial services consulting at PwC, blending her accounting training with her public policy background in a career few of her classmates pursued. Her advice for anyone charting an unconventional route: “Sometimes you just have to tell yourself that this path exists. It just won’t look like what everyone else is doing, but it’s still there.”
And Ragland? He secured a full-time offer from his firm after third year, skipped the recruiting grind entirely, and found that the MSA prepared him well for the transition into public accounting. “I was able to hit the ground running,” says the Manager of Keiter’s Transaction Advisory practice and Investment Bank.
McDermott sees one more trait those in the Pathway share because they had to pivot after they didn’t get into the Commerce School: “These are students who’ve already learned to flex the resilience muscle in the face of disappointment,” she says, “and they’ve been stronger for it.”
For students whose first plan doesn’t work out, the message from those who’ve walked the Pathway shows that one admissions decision doesn’t determine where you’ll end up. At McIntire, there’s more than one door into accounting.
