<p>I've applied to IU and Mizzou. My GC said I'm most likely going to get in to both. I'm from up state New York, so I'm OOS for both, and money is about the same. I'm not counting my chickens, but I'm curious what others think about my decision. Here is my pro/con list and tell me what you think</p>
<p>Mizzou
Pro
J-school
big sports
friend in a mid sized frat
great campus
decent business school
would double major in marketing in business and
public relations in the j-school</p>
<p>Con
Not really respected outside of journalism and business
Random school for where I come from
High acceptance rate, almost 85%, I don't know if that means low quality student
I'm mostly worried about the national rep outside of the two subjects I'm studying. If I go into PR, I'm wondering if an employer would see the j-school, or just an average public school</p>
<p>Indiana
Pros
Respected public school in all subjects, solid national rep
Lower acceptance rate
Have sort of know someone in a huge frat, I don't know if would get in to it just knowing somebody
More options than Mizzou
Big sports
great campus</p>
<p>Cons
Not as good of a J-school
great business school, but too hard for me to get into (still more options here though)
A tad bit more expensive, not a huge deal though
I don't know if having an acquaintance in a top fraternity would get me in
I want to join a fraternity going to a state school OOS where most come in knowing people</p>
<p>I know the decision ends up being mine, but I still want to here what you all think!</p>
<p>In my opinion, knowing someone should absolutely not figure into your decision. You should ask them what they think, but don’t make a decision based on their being there.<br>
When we were trying to decide between two schools, we actually called the alumni relations department of each and asked them how many alums they had in our home state, and could they give us some contacts. Both schools had alum groups in CA, but one was clearly pretty inactive. We looked at numbers of people in our area, level of activity of alum group, and response of the alum office as factors in our decision. Eventually, our daughter chose the more expensive school (her money - her decision!) due to a number of factors, but alumni support in our state was a factor. </p>
<p>you might find yourself with some nice scholarships from Mizzou - if you are significantly above the admissions curve they want to encourage you to come. If your stats are really high, they may even have an honors program. </p>
<p>Assume that you have read the college ******* site, yelp, the visit reports here pretty thoroughly. There is another one too that we used - student ratings or something like that? We also looked at rate your professor dot com to see how the schools professors in her target major stacked up in the student’s eyes, and of course read every word here on both schools. Good luck!</p>
<p>Outside of their respective geographic areas, no one is going to know anything about either of these schools, with the possible exception of journalists. There are large portions of the East Coast population that couldn’t find either state on a map, and their knowledge of either school will be limited to how well the football teams do that year (which is usually mediocre to pour.) A few folks will remember (falsely) that Larry Bird went to IU. </p>
<p>Journalism is a tough career these days. I’m not at all convinced that, generally speaking, a journalism degree is particularly helpful to a journalism career (though maybe it helps with the first job?) We’ve had working journalists in our family (hey - I write two regular magazine columns) - none of them had a journalism degree, or even took a single journalism course.</p>
<p>You didn’t say whether you like to write, or whether you are particularly interested in journalism managment. (It may be too early to know.) Go where you feel comfortable, and feel challenged.</p>
<p>Outside of pure journalism, aren’t the business classes at Indiana stronger? We had some great interns from Indiana in marketing and communications and PR over the years. If you were thinking of marketing and PR I’d take a close look at Mizzou’s marketing classes compared to Indiana. Both are “good” choices for the area you’re headed. Maybe surf the alumni notes on the website and see where alumni are out of Indiana and Mizzou in PR as a point of comparison. Tough decision and neither is probably overtly incorrect.</p>
<p>uniman, just because you did not get into Kelley as a direct-admit doesn’t mean that the business school at IU is closed to you. Lots of kids get into the business school after doing the prereqs. Work hard and you should be fine. Also, SPEA is very well-respected and that is another route that b-school kids take, and it offers opportunities for PR, from the non-profit side.
Were you close to the criteria for direct admit? You can also petition for it.
The fraternity culture is huge there, and it is often about who you know. My question is, are you willing to look past a few top houses? If so, then you should be fine at IU. Make sure you get in touch with your friend and see about summer rushing events. Although I went to IU in the dark ages, I still am not an expert on fraternity recruitment, other than to know that some houses seem to fill with the same high schools/regions even before school starts, but that other great houses don’t have entire pledge classes filled before school starts.</p>