The Washington State Board of Accountancy has specific education requirements that are current after July 2000. In order to be eligible to take the CPA exam, a person must have a Bachelor’s degree or higher and must have completed at least 150 semester credits of college education (Board of Accountancy Washington State). Within these 150 semester credits, 24 credits must be in accounting subjects with 15 credits at the upper or graduate level and 24 credits must be in business administration subjects (Board of Accountancy Washington State). The Board must also recognize your school as an accredited college. If your education was outside of the United States or was received from a non-accredited US college or university, the education has to be evaluated by a recognized evaluation service (Board of Accountancy Washington State).
The CPA exam consists of multiple choice questions, written communication, and task based simulations. There are two sections to the CPA exam: the content specification outlines (CSOs) which covers auditing and attestation, financial accounting and reporting, regulation, and business environment and concepts; and the skill specification outlines (SSOs) which covers knowledge and understanding, application of the knowledge, and written communication (American Institute of CPAs, 2013).
The auditing and attestation section of the CSOs covers auditing standards for public and non-public entities, government entities, and not-for-profit entities. It also covers employee benefit plans, standards related to attestation and assurance, standards for accounting and review services, and knowledge of CPA responsibilities, such as ethics and independence (American Institute of CPAs, 2013). The percentage breakdown of the auditing and attestation part of the CSO section questions is as follows:
 Engagement acceptance and understanding the assignment