Spring MBA Grads Turn Heads at ‘Big Four’ Accounting Firms

OXFORD, Miss. – Five spring graduates of the MBA program at the University of Mississippi have landed jobs with Big Four accounting firms.

Brandon Blewett of Houston, Texas, is an associate in state and local tax at KPMG in Atlanta; Anne Drown of Covington, La., is an associate in assurance practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers in New Orleans; Charlie House, formerly of Drew, is a staff accountant in assurance services with Ernst and Young in Memphis; Blair McDonald of Ruston, La., is an associate in advisory in federal financial management and analysis at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Washington, D.C.; and Paul Pak of Olive Branch is an enterprise risk services consultant for business risk at Deloitte in Memphis.

“Besides performing with academic excellence, these students worked hard to secure jobs, starting very early in their MBA programs,” said Bethany Cooper, director of corporate relations and MBA services in the School of Business Administration. “They possess strong networking skills and understood the importance of making the job search a priority alongside their studies.”

Drown and McDonald graduated from UM’s Patterson School of Accountancy, and Pak earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from the UM business school. Blewett graduated from Southern Methodist University and the University of South Carolina Law School. House holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Mississippi College.

The UM business school granted MBA degrees to 55 candidates at spring commencement.

Attesting to the school’s reputation for attracting outstanding students and the success of job placement for its graduates, Cooper pointed to two recent national rankings: U.S. News and World Report placed the school at No. 83 in its annual ranking of the nation’s nearly 1,800 undergraduate business programs and GetEducated.com’s national editorial review team ranked the online MBA program 13th out of 133 competing online MBAs nationwide.

To learn more about the schools of business or accountancy, visit http://www.olemissbusiness.com/ and http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/.