Advice on J-Schools/Mass Comm Schools: Missouri, Marquette, Fordham

I have been to the Bronx. And Fordham has a very nice campus. But it is not Manhattan.

I think Vin Scully is a Fordham grad as well. I hear he's done OK.

 

I, as well, have been to Fordham many times. The campus is very nice. I loved walking down Fordham road during the day, so much life and variety. But it's not exactly in the safest of areas, especially at night. My sister graduated from FU and was held up at gunpoint and robbed not too far outside of campus. Not saying that's the norm, but I can bet she wasn't the only one.

 

Sometimes they are. Sometimes they're not. You can get great journalists from a no-name J-program. But you also have to remember the great J-schools can produce dreck. Look at Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley. They came from Maryland.

 

Not to toot my own horn too much, but we have a pretty good setup at the University of Florida. I can't compare the courses between schools, but our newspaper has some of the best sports coverage around, and we get set up nicely with corros. UF doesn't match some of the classes at these other schools, but the work experience is great.

 

For sure. I'm talking overall. People may not be hiring people because of the brand-name school. They may be hiring them because they happen to be the best. It's like the people who gripe about SAT scores overshadowing other aspects of their applications for college. Well, a lot of times, the high SAT score kids also have great applications all around. Same here. Make sense?

 

Yeah, but I'm talking about the mentality I saw mentioned earlier of people who hire because of the J-school a candidate went to.

I guess I feel more of an affinity with those who didn't go to the big name J-school because I didn't go to a J-school at all...

 

Just giving this a bump to seek out a few more PMs and/or comments. I swear I'm not post-padding, as my stunning total in 4 1/2 years as a member will attest.

 

Some of that mentality is related to the principle of plausible deniability. As in, if you hire someone from Missouri and he sucks, you can successfully defend yourself with, "Boy, how was I to know? He went to Missouri!" Whereas if you hire someone from Wisconsin Lutheran, and he doesn't work out, even if that person had the same quality of clips as the Missouri guy, you're going to catch big-time shit.

 

I'm with Mayfly... Hindsight is 20/20, but if i had the chance to do it over again, I would have applied at places like Missouri, Ohio University, Marquette etc...

If nothing else, these schools have established reputations, and maybe more importantly, established connections.

But it sounds like your nephew already is targeting some bigger name schools. I don't know a ton about any of the three you've listed, but Mizzou has a great reputation with my coworkers.

And although it hasn't been mentioned, Ohio U. is a pretty impressive program. I took several visits to Athens when I was choosing a school, and if it wasn't for the fact that I wanted to continue playing sports and wasn't good enough for DI (even the MAC), I would have ended up there.

 

Fordham is in the Bronx. They have a satellite campus in Manhattan. I have some friends who went to Fordham and they rave about the program.

 

In addition to Scully, Fordham alums also include ESPN's Around the Horn's Tony Reali, YES/ESPN 1050's Michael Kay, and NBA analyst Mike Breen. It's a great school, but definitely not in the greatest area. I don't know much about their newspaper, but as someone mentioned earlier their radio station is fantastic.