Olivia Spooner ’15, MAcc '16 has won the prestigious Elijah Watt Sells Award from the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) for obtaining a cumulative average score above 95.50 across all four sections of the Uniform Certified Public Accounting exam.

Spooner, an audit associate at RSM US, LLP in Boston, was one of only 58 individuals nationwide to meet the stringent AICPA standard, having passed all four sections of the CPA exam on her first attempt and completing testing in 2016. A total of 102,323 individuals took the CPA exam in 2016 with less than half passing the auditing and attestation, financial accounting and reporting, and regulation sections.

Spooner is the first UVM graduate to win the Elijah Watt Sells Award, established in 1923 to recognize outstanding performance on the CPA examination. "I feel honored to be recognized and represent UVM," said Spooner. "I cannot give enough credit to the MAcc Program and my professors. The program set me up for success on both the exam and my first year in public accounting. I can honestly say I love what I do."

UVM was among the top 40 institutions in the U.S. for its pass rate on the CPA exam in the 2016 and 2015 exam rankings from the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy. Its 78.6 percent pass rate for 2016, based on the scores of 49 candidates, is well above the 54.4 percent overall (international and national) pass rate.

UVM’s overall 2016 pass rate was better than all but 22 of the 858 institutions with 10 or more candidates included in the rankings. It also ranked fourth out of 284 medium-sized programs with 21-60 CPA exam candidates for an improvement of 16 places over last year’s 20th-place ranking. UVM Master of Accountancy students achieved a 2016 pass rate of 94.4 percent, based upon the 18 candidates who took a total of 36 sections of the exam during the year. This pass rate ranks UVM MAcc graduates No. 1 among all US schools when counting students with advanced degrees on first time testing events within one year of graduation.