medill vs newhouse

Bala
Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:21:45 +0000

Medill’s print journalism experience is measurably better than any other undergraduate program in the US. The overall academic quality of your fellow students will also be as good as one can find anywhere. Broadcast is a different story, though. Newhouse has a very strong program and is very well connected to industry (at least regionally in the Northeast). The same applies to USC’s connections on the West Coast and Maryland’s connections along the Baltimore-Washington corridor. Missouri has a national reputation for strong preparation in all subfields but is academically less rigorous than NU.

To follow-up atardecer0’s comments, while the attrition rate at Medill remains very low, ultimately only about 1/2 of graduates go into pure journalism based careers. Many find their way into related fields like PR, advertising, and marketing. A large contingent head off to law school. No matter where they go, Medill’s name carries a significant brand advantage when applying for jobs or to grad schools. Writing skills are highly valued and the expectation by the world at large is that Medill grads deliver on these skills.

If you think broadcast is your calling, Newhouse will prep you very well. But if you ultimately change career paths, even if not as dramatically as atardecer0 did in seeking a path to medical school, you may give consideration to the advantage Northwestern’s academic cred will offer.