If you pursue a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #5 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 42 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Communication & Media Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in New York ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 3,038 bachelor's degrees in communication & media studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Media Communication (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Media Communication (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 1
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 1 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 1
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 0 offers with relevance >= 1.0
DEBUG: Backfilling with 0 offers with relevance >= 0.9
DEBUG: Backfilling with 1 offers with relevance >= 0.8
Choosing a Great Communication & Media Studies School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of communication & media studies for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a host of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on communication & media studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other communication & media studies students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How much debt communication & media studies students go into to obtain their bachelor's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized communication & media studies related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for communication & media studies students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Communication & Media Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in New York list, to help you choose the best school for you.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "communication-journalism-media//communication-media-studies"
It is difficult to beat Cornell University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies. Located in the city of Ithaca, Cornell is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the communication & media studies major at Cornell University make $28,347 more than the typical college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
It is difficult to beat Marist College if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies. Marist is a medium-sized private not-for-profit college located in the suburb of Poughkeepsie.
Those communication & media studies students who get their bachelor's degree from Marist College earn $7,983 more than the average communications student.
Fordham University is a good option for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies. Fordham U is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Bronx.
Communication & Media Studies bachelor's degree recipients from Fordham University get an earnings boost of around $12,570 over the average earnings of communication & media studies majors.
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies needs to take a look at Syracuse University. Located in the city of Syracuse, Syracuse is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the communication & media studies degree program at Syracuse University get $2,932 more than the standard graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
University at Buffalo is a fairly large public university located in the large suburb of Buffalo.
Those communication & media studies students who get their bachelor's degree from University at Buffalo earn $5,391 more than the average communications grad.
Pace University is a large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of New York.
Communication & Media Studies bachelor's degree recipients from Pace University - New York receive an earnings boost of around $2,157 over the typical earnings of communication & media studies graduates.
Hofstra is a large private not-for-profit university located in the large suburb of Hempstead.
Communication & Media Studies bachelor's degree recipients from Hofstra University earn a boost of about $5,947 above the average earnings of communication & media studies graduates.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).