How to Pick the Best Journalism School
Picking the right journalism school could be the key to your whole journalism career. Most journalism schools have reputations around the journalistic community as being known for a certain type of journalism, and choosing the right school could help you land the right job. The key to finding the best school for you is determining what type of journalist you want to be. To pick the best journalism school for you, follow these steps.
Instructions
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Decide what type of journalist you want to be. Several schools offer curricula focusing on newspapers, magazine, television, advertising, photography and online journalism. If you can't decide what type of journalism you want to pursue, most major journalism schools offer a little bit of everything for your first couple years. By your junior year however, you might have to make a decision.
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Choose a school that has an actual journalism program rather than a communications program. A journalism curriculum will better tailor your learning toward real-world journalism.
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Make sure the professors have professional journalism experience. Those who have practiced real journalism will do a better job of helping you prepare for it.
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Find a school that has a place to practice your skills. Some of the more popular journalism schools produce the city newspaper or magazine, or have a local television station. Most of these opportunities will be classes that you have to take to graduate. This will prepare you for the real world.
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Select a school that is accredited. The better journalism schools will be accredited by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC). Because of this, most of these accredited schools will offer a bachelor of journalism degree rather than the bachelor of arts degree that you might get at a non-accredited institution or an institution with just a communications school.
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Tips & Warnings
Visit a couple of campuses before settling on a school. Just because it might be the best journalism school for what you want to study doesn't mean it's going to be the best school for you personally.
Query some of your favorite journalists and ask where they went to school or if they have any recommendations on where you should go to school. Most are eager to help young people get started.
Many of the larger journalism schools require prerequisite classes for your first two years before having you apply for the actual school of journalism. You will need a certain grade point average in those first two years to get into the journalism school.
