Advice for HS Journalism student!

The comments about Mizzou are probably fairly accurate, but certain things said are untrue.

I go to Drake University in Des Moines, IA (yes, Iowa…but look into it). Unlike at Mizzou, we start our program as freshmen. You get into the field right away and you can get paid internships as early as your freshman year at Meredith Corporation 5 minutes from campus (a bunch of Mizzou students intern at Meredith in the summer, but we get the experience all year round). Meredith is one of the top magazine publishers in the country. If nothing else, the proximity of our school to this company and their willingness to help Drake students is worth sticking out 4 years in Iowa. Our Jschool is named after them, and Meredith sponsors internship programs and campus magazines for Drake. There really is no better deal.

One person posted that Mizzou is the ONLY place to get real world experience before graduation. Absolutely untrue—please do the research yourself. Drake students intern here in DM all the time, and many intern in other cities as well—Chicago, Milwaukee, and tons in New York. At Mizzou, which I also looked into, you’re a number. At Drake, in a Jschool of 500, you really get to know your fellow students, your professors (who have worked in the industry), and often grads currently working all over the country. And also—our campus magazines beat Mizzou’s nearly every year in national journalism competitions. You can join these publications as a freshman as well.

If you want a bigger school or a better location, NYU is great as are a few others, but I do not think Mizzou is worth the time or money. Northwestern is also a little overrated.

Hope this helps, and sorry to offend any Mizzou students! It’s a great school—it’s just not the ONLY school by any means :)

Landon,

I am currently a senior getting ready to graduate from the University of Missouri. The journalism school at MU was the first in the country and to date is considered one of the top programs to graduate from. I have had paid internships and gotten interviews at places based on the name of my college alone. It is the ONLY journalism school where you will receive real world experience before graduation. Our staff contains some of the top names in the journalism business and can serve as excellent recommendations for internships and jobs.

The J-school is hard to get in to and is very competitive. Only approximately 500 are accepted each year. I know that a state college probably isn’t your top choice, but trust me when I say that MU’s reputation proceeds it. In fact, when you graduate they refer to you as part of the “Mizzou Mafia” because we have so many connections. The good news is that since it is a state school, it is probably more affordable than some of your other choices.

Your long-term goals are the same as mine. When you are in your last semester, you take a course that has you working in your field called your capstone. I was one of 16 magazine students selected to work at a weekly alternative magazine in my town. I serve as a real editor for the magazine, editing a section, sometimes features and sometimes serving as an assistant managing editor. People who have completed this capstone in the past have gone on to work for Southern Living, Marie Claire, etc.

Let me know if you have any questions!

I’m not quite sure what to make of your list. For one thing, FIT is on a vastly different level than the other options—and an Advertising and Marketing degree is not the same as a journalism degree by any stretch. On the plus side, FIT seems to have a really cool website.

Another thing: Columbia doesn’t offer an undergrad Journalism program, so you’d have to study english or something if you go there. They do have a grad school program, which i assume you reference in the number four slot, but a two-year associate degree will not suffice for admission.

So then we have Northwestern, the only school not in New York. I assume that your NYC-centricity is because you live here (and maybe even in Chelsea, because somehow FIT is in the perfect area and NYU is not?). Would you really want to move to Evanston, IL, even though you seem otherwise unwilling to leave New York? Frankly, I’ve never met a Medill grad worth her salt, and that program has been under a lot of fire lately for its crazy new dean and his random acts of plagiarism. I’d just cross this one off your list early.

So then you have: FIT, but you wouldn’t study journalism; NYU; and Columbia, where you also wouldn’t study journalism. This is not a good list. Luckily, you have two years to refine it.

Let me offer you some advice: Try to look beyond the expected schools, the places that come immediately to mind when you think “I want to be Anna Wintour” (or, as you phrase it, a Meryl Streep character.) Start looking now and find a school that has more than a reputation. People who rely on reputations are people who don’t have the capacity to make it on their own.

Don’t study journalism as an undergrad. Study graphic design or something like that—it seems like that is where your interests lie. You can pick up how to write a lede; it’s much harder to pick up how to get the most out of Photoshop.

So study design and, while you’re in school, write for the school paper. Get both editorial and graphic-based internships. Graduate with a minor in english or something. Use college to pick up skills you wouldn’t otherwise be able to acquire. Do this, and you’ll be 10 times more qualified than i was when I graduated.

FIT would definitely be a great choice if you have a broad cross-section of interests; NYU, Columbia, and Northwestern are all great schools and it sounds like you’re pretty committed to a big city school; there are definitely advantages to being in a city. You need a 4-year degree to get into any reputable graduate program (that’s why they call it “graduate” school) so scratch that off your list for now.

I don’t know you, so I am not going to make any judgements about the likelihood of you getting into any colleges, but realize that all of these schools are incredibly competitive in admissions. It’s good to have a top 5, but devote equal airtime to your plan B. You’re a sophomore in high school, there’s no reason to limit your options this early on—and I will tell you, we have all seen the crying high school seniors who didn’t get into their dream school and hadn’t mentally prepared for that possibility, and they all end up having perfectly wonderful lives. Or if they don’t, its not because of where they went to undergrad. Anyway.

For right now, focus your energy on making the most of your experience right now—it’ll be good for your college applications, and good for you as a future editor. It’s great that you’re a yearbook editor, and I’ve never seen a magazine staff that wasn’t composed almost entirely of former yearbook editors, so excel at that, get excellent grades, study for your SATs, and start looking for internships. I had my first mag internship the summer after my sophomore year and ended up writing a column for that magazine for the next two years; the magazine was tiny and forgettable but that experience helped me start getting bigger and better jobs, so I had a lot of experience when I was up against older college students a few years later. I know you can’t wait to get to what’s next, but truly, there’s a lot you still have to do.

Also: not to be the one to burst the bubble, but there is no job at large magazines where you both actively write and design and also attend fashion weeks—those are basically the three top positions at any fashion magazine rolled into one. But hey, honestly, dream big and get a variety of experiences—life will force you to scale down and specialize soon enough. If you research top editors, the one thing they all have in common is that they have basically nothing in common—if there was a magic formula, we’d all be using it.