I’m a rising sophomore from Virginia, and although I know it may be a bit early to be looking at colleges, I’d like to get a nice head start. My dream is to become a copywriter, and I’d appreciate any advice for which schools to look at.
Thanks
I think any liberal arts college college would be great. A basic liberal arts education that provides a grounding in analysis and communications and history and all those other basics would be important t o actually being effective. Many of the more elite LACs (along with the Ivys) are the type of places that the Madison Avenue firms use to recruit talent.
Anywhere where you can receive a solid education in English, communications, history etc. is good.
Thanks to you both, I appreciate the replies and advice, but I was really looking for specific programs at specific universities, and would be grateful is someone could provide information on some.
Most schools don’t have a program in copywriting. What you’re going to want to look for is schools with good communications/journalism/PR departments (this would be more toward PR and advertising, in general, since copywriting has to do with advertising, but at some schools this would be housed in the journalism school, at others, communications, etc.). My school, the University of Missouri, offers an [interest area in copywriting](http://journalism.missouri.edu/programs/undergraduate/junior-senior/areas-study/strategic-communication-copywriting/) in the school of journalism, but they’re the only school I know of that does something like that (maybe other schools have this option, I’m not sure). At most schools, you’d major in communications or something similar.
As far as schools with good communications/journalism programs, there are many. Like I said, Mizzou, as well are Boston University, Ohio University, Northwestern, Penn State, University of Florida, Syracuse. I’m a journalism major and from Virginia, and I went out of state because VA doesn’t really have a lot of options for people looking to get into these types of careers. VCU has an excellent broadcast journalism program, not so sure about what they have to offer for what you’re interested in. George Mason has a decent journalism/communications program, but again, not sure what they have to offer on the strategic communications/PR side of things. I don’t know a ton about advertising and PR, but it does have a slight overlap with journalism at some colleges, so I can give you the names of good journalism schools and you can go from there are see if they have any sort of classes/programs that interest you.
Thank you so much, this was exactly what I was looking for. I suppose in my original post I should have explained that I was looking for an advertising/ strategic communications major, perhaps with a concentration available on writing, but I’m glad it worked out.