Have you also considered Ithaca?
Both SU and Ithaca are very expensive. Very.
Journalism tends to pay poorly so taking $30K of loans is not the wisest choice IMHO. It’s not very wise even if you’re getting a petroleum engineering degree, and those are some of the best-paying jobs.
It’s your WORK experience that will ultimately get you your jobs. Work experience and abilities trumps school name time and again. School name might get you into the interview room, but the person who can churn out articles and web content and corporate communications copy, all of that consistently, day after day, on deadline, that person will keep their job and rise in their field. It’s competence.
There’s no need to major in “journalism”. Writing well is what you need. First and foremost. I would look for schools with great English departments before I’d look at schools with journalism degrees.
To my mind here are the best ways to do journalism/ English in the NYC area, starting with the cheapest but then following no particular order thereafter:
- Baruch College or Brooklyn College – apply through the Macaulay Honors Program. It’s not only free but you get a stipend (or the program used to include a small stipend) and it’s prestigious. Baruch is a great school and if you got into financial-sector journalism / writing and worked on Wall Street, you’d really do well. Baruch also has other departments, but it’s a hidden gem in NYC that you can do so well for so cheap.
Brooklyn College has a fine writing programs. It regularly produces Pulitzer winners. CUNY has dorms. so you could get distance from your parents. You’d graduate debt-free.
https://macaulay.cuny.edu/
Also check out SUNY Albany; Oswego; Geneseo, Stony Brook; Buffalo if you want schools further afield.
Vassar – it has one of the best writing programs in the country. Everyone knows that Vassar grads can write. It’s also on the train line to NYC. Vassar grads go into journalism, into screenwriting, etc.
Bard – also known for writing. More literary but excellent. And again, writing well is your primary skill set in journalism.
Barnard college --A great English department.
Union College – has a more practical / commercial take on Writing.
Skidmore
U of Rochester – this is a great school and its English department is quite good. You’d stand out as an applicant IMHO if you target English as your major. This school seems to attract more STEM folks but it’s English dept. is quite good.
If you were looking out of state at all, consider for the strength of their writing programs: Wesleyan, Wellesley, Connecticut College, Mt. Holyoke, Smith, Amherst. Also within easy driving distance to NYC: Muhlenberg has a great arts program. I’m less clear about their English department but it’s a happy school and you might find a match. Bryn Mawr and Haverford have excellent writing and they practically are the same school. They share facilities and campuses and both campuses are pretty. They are also part of a consortium with Swarthmore and UPenn–you would get a fabulous education. If your GPA is a little lower also consider Drew University–easy trip to NYC, pretty campus, and arty
I personally would not recommend Syracuse right now because the school is 1) very expensive and 2) I’ve heard from a current student that the communications program isn’t all that great and they wished they’d gone someplace else and 3) the school has suffered lately from not only COVID but racism issues–enough that they closed the school for a period. To my mind it’s not worth the cost. Also, the president in recent years tacked on an across the board, all students, an extra about $1400 bill.
Ithaca–many students like this school. It’s very expensive however. If you were my child I’d seriously look at the school and see if what it delivers what it purports to offer. But I’d also be mindful of the cost. Ithaca to my mind is great at marketing itself and it’s always wise to look a little deeper than the marketing. Marketing, after all, is just words.
If you were my child, interested in journalism, I’d gently suggest the following strategy. 1) get a degree in English from the best dept you can 2) do some sort of minor or pick up courses online for free in something practical, such as econ or statistics, or marketing; 3) do lots of internships–target writing depts at banks, or corporations, or news outlets that seem strong currently; 4) write for school papers and get lots of practice. 5) maintain a blog on something that you adore: music, movies, film stars, whatever. Do this every day. 6) pump readers to your blog through social media such as Twitter etc.
To check ON AVERAGE costs for you for any of these schools, use COLLEGE NAVIGATOR, find and then click on and find your family’s income level.
Best of luck to you.