You Don't Pick a Firm. You Pick a Lane.

In partnership with

Signed World Cup Legend Jersey. Every Day. Free.

For 10 days during the World Cup knockouts, Kalshi is giving away a signed, authenticated jersey from a different soccer legend every 24 hours. One winner per day. The roster: Di María, Ochoa, Dempsey, Modrić, Falcao, Varane, Ferdinand, Villa, and the grand prize: Messi's actual game-worn jersey from the match he scored his 800th career goal. It's free to enter in the Kalshi app. Every daily check-in earns you an entry toward Messi. The more days you show up, the better your odds. Download the app and start entering now.

Download and Enter Free

_{Free to enter. App required. No purchase necessary. 18+, U.S. only (excl. NY & FL).}

Welcome to today's SCALIS EarlyCareers newsletter! 🚀

If you are an accounting or finance major, you already know the advice: get a Big 4 internship, and the rest takes care of itself. Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG. Land a summer there, do solid work, and you almost certainly walk out with a full-time offer before senior year even starts.

That part is true. What nobody tells you is that the biggest decision you make this recruiting season is not which of the four firms you target. It is which lane you get into once you are inside one. Accounting internships are not generic. When you apply, you are usually applying to a specific service line: audit, tax, or advisory. Those three are almost different careers that happen to share a lobby, and the one you pick as an intern is the one you tend to be stuck in for years.

On top of that, the ground is moving under the whole profession right now. For decades, becoming a CPA meant a fifth year of school to hit 150 credit hours. In 2026 that is no longer the only path in a large and growing number of states, which changes the math on whether you should sign up (and pay) for that extra year at all.

Big 4 summer applications for next year open roughly August through October, and they move on a rolling basis. So the time to get these decisions right is now, before you fire off applications you cannot take back. Here is what actually matters.

Stop Drowning In AI Information Overload

Your inbox is flooded with newsletters. Your feed is chaos. Somewhere in that noise are the insights that could transform your work—but who has time to find them?

The Deep View solves this. We read everything, analyze what matters, and deliver only the intelligence you need. No duplicate stories, no filler content, no wasted time. Just the essential AI developments that impact your industry, explained clearly and concisely.

Replace hours of scattered reading with five focused minutes. While others scramble to keep up, you'll stay ahead of developments that matter. 600,000+ professionals at top companies have already made this switch.

Join them today, for free.

3,328 new internship positions freshly posted today. View the full list below and start applying!

Choose your lane before you apply, not after

Audit is the classic path: you verify that companies' financial statements are accurate. It is the most direct route to the CPA, it runs on a brutal January-to-April busy season, and it is the widest door because firms hire the most audit interns. Tax is exactly what it sounds like, deep in the code, also CPA-track, also busy-season heavy, and it rewards people who like rules and detail. Advisory (sometimes called consulting or risk) is the outlier: project-based work closer to strategy and technology, open to a much wider range of majors, and often not on the CPA track at all.

Pick deliberately. If your plan is CPA and a stable, credential-driven career, audit or tax is the lane. If you want the consulting-style work and are open to more diverse skills over a license, advisory fits better. One more 2026 wrinkle worth knowing: AI is reshaping all three, automating a lot of the routine testing and data pulls that used to fill an intern's day, so firms increasingly want interns who are comfortable with tools like Excel plus Python, Alteryx, or Power BI. Naming that fluency helps in every lane, and it matters most in advisory.

Do the CPA math before you commit to a fifth year

This is the freshest thing happening in your field, and most students have not caught up. The AICPA and NASBA approved a new model in 2025 that adds a pathway to CPA licensure: a bachelor's degree plus two years of work experience plus passing the exam, as an alternative to the old bachelor's plus 150 credit hours plus one year. By mid-2026, well over twenty states had enacted or activated some version of this, and a couple had gone even further.

Why you should care right now: the default assumption for years has been "I need a fifth year or a master's of accounting to get to 150 hours." That may no longer be true in your state, and a fifth year is real money and time. Before you enroll in a MAcc or pile on extra credits, look up your own state board's current rules (they are shifting fast and vary widely) and confirm which pathway applies to you. If the "bachelor's plus experience" route is live where you plan to get licensed, the internship you land this year could count toward the experience that gets you the CPA, no fifth year required. That is a genuinely different plan than the one your advisor gave you two years ago.

Signed World Cup Jerseys. One Given Away Daily. Free.

Kalshi is giving away a signed, authenticated jersey from a World Cup legend every day through July 7. Ochoa, Modrić, Falcao, Varane, and more. Grand prize: Messi's game-worn 800th-goal jersey. Enter free in the Kalshi app and check in daily to stack your entries.

Get the App. Enter Free.

_{Free to enter. App required. No purchase necessary. 18+, U.S. only (excl. NY & FL).}

Recruit through accounting's own channels, not just the job board

Accounting has recruiting infrastructure that other fields do not, and it is where the firms actually spend their time. Beta Alpha Psi is the accounting, finance, and information systems honor society, and its chapter events are a direct pipeline to Big 4 recruiters who show up specifically to scout members. If your school has a chapter and you are eligible, join it, because membership is a signal firms recognize and an access point most applicants never use.

The other one is "Meet the Firms," the accounting-specific recruiting night most business schools run in the early fall. This is not a generic career fair. It is the event where the Big 4, regional firms, and boutiques all set up in one room to meet accounting students weeks before applications close. If you are a freshman or sophomore, also look up the firms' early identification programs by name (Deloitte Discovery, and the equivalents at PwC, EY, and KPMG), which are built to pull underclassmen into the pipeline a year or two early. These channels are the front door. The public job posting is the side entrance everyone crowds into.

Know that the winter internship is a real second shot

Almost everyone fixates on the summer internship and assumes that if they miss it, they wait a year. Not in accounting. Because audit and tax run on a January-to-April busy season, firms also run busy-season internships in the winter and spring, when the actual work is heaviest and they genuinely need the hands.

That is a second entry point most students never consider. If summer recruiting does not break your way, a busy-season internship serves the exact same purpose: real client work, a real look from the firm, and the same conversion pipeline to a full-time offer. Regional firms (think Grant Thornton, RSM, BDO) also recruit on later timelines than the Big 4 and are less of a bloodbath, so a strong play is to chase the Big 4 summer cycle and keep the busy-season and regional options as live backups rather than consolation prizes.

Bonus: how to actually work a Meet the Firms night

The room will be loud, crowded, and full of students saying the same thing. Do not wing it. Before you go, look up which firms are attending and pick your top three, so you are not wandering. Hit your second choice first to warm up, then your top target once you have your rhythm.

At the table, skip "so what does your firm do." You are there to be remembered, so lead with something specific and short:

That does three things: it shows you did homework, it signals you already know lanes exist, and it gives the recruiter an easy, real answer. Get a name and, if the setting allows, a way to follow up. Then follow up within 24 hours with a two-line note referencing what you actually talked about. Almost nobody does the follow-up, which is exactly why it works.