Students who need help with their tax returns this winter can find a helping hand right here on campus. The Certified Public Accounting personnel report ranked Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business undergraduate accounting program 10th in the nation.”It makes me more proud that I graduated from OSU,” said Fisher alumnus Chang-jun Lee.Joseph A. Alutto, dean of the business college said the ranking was justified.”Our advancement in the ranking reflects the college’s ongoing commitment to evaluate and continually improve our programs,” he said.Six other Big Ten schools were ranked in the top 20: Illinois (1), Michigan (4), Michigan State (7), Indiana University (9), Wisconsin (11) and Penn State (16).The annual ranking is based on a survey of the nation’s accounting faculty members and professionals. The survey asks accounting professors what accounting undergraduate program they would recommend if asked by a high school senior.For the past 18 years, the CPA Personnel Report has rated the top 20 graduate and undergraduate accounting programs. The survey was sent to more than 1,600 heads of accredited U.S. accounting programs as well as 20 of the nation’s largest accounting firms.”The CPA Personnel Report ranking is not conducted systematically and does not reflect actual change in quality of student and faculty, (and so) what is more important is not where the school is located in the ranking but how long it has been in the top 20,” said Lawrence Tomassini, chairman of the accounting department.The Fisher’s undergraduate accounting program has ranked in the top 20 since 1982 when the CPA Personnel Report was first published. “There is, in my opinion, no significant difference between fifth and 15th in the ranking,” Tomassini said.Regardless of the ranking, the quality of business students has recently improved. The high school grade point average and the SAT or ACT scores of new students in the Fisher’s accounting program have increased in the past few years. “Our goal is to help our students to get better qualification in a job market. Our goal is not to locate the school in better ranking,” Tomassini said. The college’s Spring 1999 class of had 208 accounting major graduates; in 1998, there were 193; and 220 in 1997.