An audience of hundreds of students and faculty cheered on four teams of accounting majors from prominent Long Island universities as they competed against each other in the first Long Island College Accounting Challenge on March 25th at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University. The game-show-style competition, sponsored by Margolin, Winer & Evens LLP (MWE) of Garden City was hosted by Cablevision News12 anchor Jodi Applegate.

The winning team of Naomi Grafer, Geoviany Petit-Maitre, Vincent Tortora, Samuel Vargas, and alternate Wai Wing Wan represented the State University of New York College at Old Westbury. The team was given a commemorative award, and each team member will receive a new Amazon Kindle2 e-book. The Adelphi University team finished second, C.W. Post's team was third, and Hofstra University came in fourth.

"Everybody had a ball," said Tracey Segarra, director of marketing at MWE. "The pep band from CW Post was playing and we even had a nail-biting ending. Two teams had the same number of points and it came down to the very last question. We got to meet these wonderful accounting students and it was great to see people having so much fun at an accounting game show. We love having our firm associated with the best and the brightest accounting students."

Questions were submitted by accounting professors at the participating universities. They included: "True or false – In accounting, depreciation may be recorded on a plant asset that is actually appreciating in its fair value." (The answer is "true.") Another example: "If Mary files her 2008 tax return on March 1, 2009, when does the statute of limitations expire for her to be audited?" The correct answer: The return is deemed filed April 15, 2009 and the statute of limitations would expire April 15, 2012.

"This success serves as proof positive of the high quality of accounting education available at SUNY College at Old Westbury," said NJ Delener, dean of the School of Business.

MWE plans to make the competition, which was free and open to the public, an annual event.

Related article:
Margolin, Winer & Evens sponsors competition for Long Island accounting students