Does anyone have information, other than what’s available on individual schools’ Web sites, that could be useful in comparing communications / media undergrad programs at Southern or Midwestern publics like Florida, Ohio State, Indiana, UT Austin, Kentucky, and Alabama? Which others would you add to a list? The focus would be more on strategic communications than on news reporting or broadcast.
Anything from anecdotal experiences, to review articles, to recent awards and competitions, to links to credible rankings would be appreciated. Many thanks.
Search Google to see what’s been written about each school. If they’ve won awards, that information should be easy to locate. I’d be more interested in knowing what courses each school offered than in rankings compiled by someone else. Can your family pay OOS costs? Run the Net Price Calculators on each school website if finances are a consideration. It won’t do you much good to spend time comparing unaffordable schools.
Thanks @austinmshauri , actually that list of schools falls out of an affordability calculation.
My D is eligible for automatic merit aid up to and including full tuition at several of them.
Others, two in particular, she meets the criteria for large merit scholarships but they are competitive, and those two flagships are reputed to take superb care of the students from their own state but very little merit aid for OOS students.
Trust me, I’m way along on the curve re: downgrading consideration of schools that are unaffordable - many privates AND some publics - and managing the reactions of my D (and application fee planning) now and continuously the next 6-8 months, rather than walking into a buzzsaw in the spring. All guidance to fine-tune this approach is appreciated!
I would look at Mizzou. I know they are known more for journalism, but I believe they have a good strategic communications program. Or at least I’m looking at them for that major.
Thanks @ntk131998 , will do. Their online NPC wasn’t that useful for OOS students (I encountered that at Illinois U-C and Tennessee Knoxville as well). Mizzou is a bit out of the way for a casual visit but we will definitely research it.
Mizzou’s NPC has wrong tuition numbers and when I ran it back in the fall it was very different from the aid I actually recieved (received more aid than NPC said I would). They do have [automatic OOS scholarships](http://financialaid.missouri.edu/types-of-aid/scholarships/first-time-college-students-non-residents.php) and you can see which your daughter would qualify for. Beyond that, their need-based aid isn’t the best for OOS students.
They’re all automatic assuming the student meets the requirements for each one. For the first five listed, students will receive whichever scholarship amount is the highest so they can only receive one scholarship. But toward the bottom of the page there are more scholarships (that aren’t automatic) hat can be combined with one of the top five.