Alum earns prestigious award for CPA test performance

Paul Kardar '18

Grove City College alumnus Paul Kardar ’18 recently received the highest recognition a certified public accountant candidate can receive.

Kardar was named a winner of the 2019 Elijah Watt Sells Award from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA.) The institute bestows the award on candidates who pass all four parts of the CPA exam on their first attempt with a cumulative score above 95.5. Nearly 75,000 individuals sat for the CPA Exam in 2019 with 137 candidates meeting the criteria to receive the Elijah Watt Sells Award.

“Attaining such a result on what is known to be one of the most difficult professional licensure exams is an outstanding accomplishment,” Dr. Michelle R. McFeaters ’88, ’02, professor of Accounting and assistant dean of the Calderwood School of Arts and Letters, said.

Kardar earned his CPA certification in 2019 and now works as a financial analyst at Medical Mutual in Cleveland, Ohio. He joins another recent alum, Kathryn Claudy ’15, in earning this distinction. She won the Elijah Watt Sells award in 2015.

Grove City College Accounting graduates routinely excel on the CPA exam. For several years running, alumni pass rates put the College in the top ten nationally. In 2018, the most recent year with publicly available pass rate statistics by school, the department’s pass rate of 79.7 percent was the highest ever and almost 30 percent above the national average. Grove City College is the second highest rated school in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania just slightly behind the University of Pennsylvania.

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