Personally, I spend about 30 seconds skimming their college or grad school transcript. Evidence of real work output & references you can count on weigh far more heavily in hiring decisions. Even then you still roll the dice.
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The other thing is that today, so much of writing and journalism in general is contract based. So you may not get hired to be a part of an organization but you may get hired for one piece on a contract basis. Many top magazines now run this way and for their online content too. Forbes actually champions this business model publicly. Why pay for a staff when you can hire from so many experts, depending upon the niche. Come to think of it, I am friends on Facebook with a hs friend’s sister. She’s always posting articles her husband has written for different publications.
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My daughter is a Creative Writing/English major and while we fully support her in this major I do worry about her job prospects. I suspect this is where your parents are coming from.
AI is having a huge impact on the creative sector, including journalism. My local media outlets are repeatedly slashing staff. I was a journalism major (at UNC-Chapel Hill) who went into graphic design instead. And both of those fields are being decimated by AI slop.
A lot of writing jobs are freelance like @tsbna44 mentioned. I was just looking at a local listing on Indeed for a publisher near me (we are not in NYC where most of the publishing jobs still are) and it was for a company that helps people self-publish and was on an “as needed” basis.
I’m not saying this to dissuade you from your desired major, but to encourage you to do some research now about how you can fulfill your desire for a career in writing and also find a job that allows you to support yourself.
My advice to you is spend some time on Indeed and other similar job sites looking for the kinds of jobs you are interested in and check the salaries and benefits. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics is a treasure trove of data about careers in the US. It’s worth spending some time digging around the website there, too.
Good luck!!
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I was a journalism major; I now work in corporate communications. I made that switch about 23 years ago, transitioning from an ad agency where I was an Associate Creative Director (copy) when I was pregnant with my first kid. It’s been a great career for me. Maybe not as creative as my advertising and journalism days, but the work is still interesting to me and I have very good benefits and pay (you might be pleasantly surprised by how much companies will pay for good comms people). I hire writers regularly… in fact, I hired a recent grad just last year. She had been our intern the summer before.
My daughter recently graduated with a degree in communications. She wants to be an arts and entertainment journalist. She had had several internships, some paid and some unpaid, she has a ton of bylines, and is currently freelancing for a few publications and working on her Substack. It’s very tough to make it as a young journalist. She has enough saved to support herself for the time being, and she knows she can start looking into corporate communications or marketing but wants to try to stick with journalism for now. She would love to have a steady job for a media company and she’s applying to many of those.
But you can be a writer or pursue writing with any major. Your success depends on your clips and your experience, so even if you major in biology or psychology or whatever, keep finding ways to get your writing published. Majoring in something else can also help you develop a niche writing career—focusing on sustainability comms, science, education, etc. If writing is what you want to do, there are many ways to keep it front and center (if you are willing to look beyond journalism).
If I were you, I’d keep your in-state public in the mix, and strongly consider it. And I think you can get strong merit at many private schools, but the COA is still going to be quite high.
Fwiw, of the schools on your list… my daughter ED’d to UPenn (had a 3.95 and 1470 SAT), was rejected. Also rejected at Yale. Went to UCLA (in-state). My son received over 30k in merit at Oberlin (his highest merit award) with a 3.8 and 35 ACT, and 16k from UMass Amherst (OOS). He is at Wesleyan (full pay).
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