best colleges for journalism -- Virtually Advising Q+A

The Q: What are the top four-year schools with journalism degrees?

The A: Even if there was one single, definitive list of the top U.S. journalism programs, I wouldn't urge you to pay much attention to it. Almost 500 colleges in this country offer journalism majors, and dozens of them could probably be justifiably considered among the best. Thing is, it's really tough to figure out just what having the "best" program means.

Is it the school with the best student newspaper? Any number of colleges have excellent student papers -- Indiana University, New York University, Loyola, Kansas State and the University of North Carolina regularly win awards for their work, and that's just to name a handful of the great student newspapers out there. The University of Pennsylvania's student newspaper (The Daily Pennsylvanian) gets an awful lot of acclaim, and graduates loads of students who go on to successful journalistic careers, yet UPenn doesn't even have a journalism major. The same is true of Harvard, whose student newspaper, the The Harvard Crimson, is considered by many to be the best in the country.

Is it the school with the best reputation, or with the largest number of famous figures in journalism teaching there? The University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism is generally recognized as a stellar program both for undergrads and graduates, and is stocked with Pulitzer Prize-winning professors. The undergrad journalism programs at Northwestern, Syracuse and U. Missouri, among others, are also highly regarded. Columbia and UC-Berkeley have reputable journalism programs, but they're only offered to graduate students; neither school has a journalism major for undergrads, although both do have pretty darn good student newspapers.

How about the school with the closest proximity to major news centers? George Washington University is right in the heart of Washington, D.C.; UC-Berkeley is just a few miles from Oakland and San Fransisco; and I already mentioned schools like NYU and UPenn.

The bottom line is that there are loads of colleges out there that could be perfect for a person looking for a journalism education, so if you're looking for one I'd urge you not to restrict yourself by trying to get a quick list of the "best" ones out there. Use a college search engine like those provided by The College Board, The Princeton Review or Peterson's and look for schools that not only offer journalism majors, but which might match your personality in other ways as well: small class sizes, maybe, or proximity to a city, or extracurricular groups and clubs.

And remember: if you're really into journalism, you can always go to grad school for it. But it's not the classes a person takes that makes him or her a great journalist; in fact, many of the best journalists out there never took a journalism course in their lives. They may have majored in political science, or philosophy, or religion, or even chemistry. They may have tried to intern at local papers or freelance for magazines. Or they may have sat around and drank for four years. But they had the passion, the energy, the talent and the natural curiosity to develop the skills they needed to succeed as journalists. I think if you want to be a journalist, you'll find a way to make that happen no matter what school you choose.

Best of luck,

—Myles Helfand, General Advisor

This response was last revised on May 1, 2005.