Two Marriott School alumni were initiated into one of the most exclusive groups in the accounting world: recipients of the Elijah Watt Sells Award, given by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. The award is only given to those who earn the highest scores across all four sections of the Uniform CPA Examination in a single testing year.
Bradley Jergensen, a 2016 MAcc graduate from Hemet, California, and Taylor Moore, a 2012 management graduate with an emphasis in finance from Hillsboro, Oregon, each recorded a cumulative average score above 95.5 for all four sections. Their scores placed them in the top 99.95 percent of individuals who sat for the examination in 2016.
“I was shocked and pleasantly surprised,” Moore says. “Earning this award wasn’t my intention, but my obsession with knowing material well perhaps led to a little more studying than was needed to pass.”
Though Moore’s background is in finance, his career at Intel involves some in-depth accounting. As he learned on the job and in his part-time MBA program, Moore decided he would benefit professionally from the certification.
Jergensen, meanwhile, had the advantage of still being enrolled in BYU’s accounting program as he studied, which proved to be an added benefit when sitting for the exams.
“BYU has one of the best accounting programs in the nation, and they definitely prepare you well for this exam,” Jergensen says. “I was basically just relearning concepts and at a simpler level than what the accounting program taught.”
The two alumni extend BYU’s streak of at least one Sells Award winner each year for the last nine years, the longest record of any university in the world.
“I continue to be amazed at the talent and commitment of our Marriott School alumni,” says Jeff Wilks, director of the BYU School of Accountancy. “We are very proud of Brad and Taylor for this accomplishment and for representing BYU and the Marriott School so well.”
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Writer: Madeleine Lewis
