<p>you will need relatively extensive journalism experience to get into columbia. i feel like a broken record saying this, but i had two years working for an award-winning news producer and i worked on an emmy-nominated documentary, and i put that front and center on my CV. a friend made it into columbia as well and he had a few years as an editor at his school newspaper and wrote a column for a widely-read toronto blog.</p>
<p>a few articles in a college paper is not enough for columbia, berkeley, or northwestern. unless you can get yourself into a leadership position at your school paper, that won’t give you enough experience. you need to try to find some professional journalism experience. summer internships (which i guess you’ve missed) or paid positions. write articles and mail them out to all your local publications. try to get freelance work at the very least.</p>
<p>also, at columbia (and most journalism schools), you are not “put on assignment.” you are told “go find and write a story.” no one’s going to hand you something and say, “there’s a press conference here, or we got a tip about that,” and tell you to go. you do that yourself. at columbia, first day of class, you have to show up with a 500-word article you write. first day, before they teach you a thing, you need to walk in the door with a story on homelessness in the south bronx or city hall recycling initiatives or whatever else you come up with. you need to hit the ground running. yes, columbia will teach you to improve your journalistic skills, but you won’t be granted admission without some measure of working knowledge.</p>
<p>i would definitely recommend taking a year or two to work and get some journalism experience. the journalism field has been going through an extremely difficult transition to new forms of media for the last few years, and it’s been made even worse in this economy. the one bright spot is, of the few places that are indeed hiring, they’d rather pick up someone with a BA in anything and train you themselves than have to pay a premium for someone holding a masters degree already. funny how that works out. go to work for a year or two and do your best to find media-related jobs. if those come up short, freelance. a lot. write and send out articles on a weekly basis, because most of them won’t get printed and you’ll need a few for your portfolio (usually your three best pieces).</p>
<p>if you work in PR and want to transition to journalism grad school, that is absolutely no problem at all, provided you still have three solid news articles to send as your portfolio. in fact, most grad students at journalism school (and certainly at the top schools) have had other careers before moving into journalism. that makes you seem like a more well-rounded and capable candidate than someone who does a journalism BA and a journalism MA with no work experience in between.</p>
<p>your instincts are right, though. your total application will not be that competitive for top schools. also, the harsh reality of it is that a journalism MA will not help you unless you attend one of these top schools. my colleague finished his degree at columbia and is now working for free at three different internships simultaneously. he has taken out personal loans to finance himself, hoping that in a year’s time, someone will offer him paid work. most of the people he graduated from columbia with have not been nearly as fortunate to find internships. yes, the guy working 3 jobs for free is the one everyone else is envying. and that is coming from the single best journalism school in the world. not good.</p>
<p>you don’t need a journalism degree to be a journalist. i’ve said that a million times here and most people just ignore me, but this is coming from someone who worked for top people, assistant-produced docs for national news stations, and all while i was still doing my undergrad. i was employed by a producer who is also a journalism professor at the grad program here (and who used to teach journalism at columbia and NYU when he lived in new york). his students would ask him for work and he’d say he didn’t have anything, but he was giving all his work to me. i hadn’t even finished my BA, but i’d proved myself to be dedicated and capable, and if i had decided to continue with him, i’d be filming a feature documentary and working on his book right now.</p>
<p>you really, really, really don’t need the degree. really. so if you want to be a journalist, do your best to find some work at it right now, prove yourself, and work your way up. in a year or two if you want to get the masters, then you can try for it, or if you want to keep going on your current path, you can do that too. good luck.</p>