Public Relations & Advertising is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #32 most popular major in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 37 schools in the Great Lakes Region to determine which ones were the best for public relations & advertising students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 2,485 bachelor's degrees in public relations & advertising to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Public Relations & Advertising School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of public relations & advertising 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on public relations & advertising students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of public relations & advertising students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt public relations & advertising 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 public relations & advertising related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for public relations & advertising students working on their bachelor's degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Public Relations & Advertising Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
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It's hard to beat Michigan State University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in public relations & advertising. Located in the city of East Lansing, Michigan State is a public university with a very large student population.
Public Relations & Advertising bachelor's degree recipients from Michigan State University earn a boost of about $4,305 above the average income of public relations & advertising graduates.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a great decision for students interested in a bachelor's degree in public relations & advertising. Located in the city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a very large student population.
Public Relations & Advertising bachelor's degree recipients from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign get an earnings boost of about $7,210 above the typical earnings of public relations & advertising majors.
Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in public relations & advertising has to take a look at DePaul University. Located in the large city of Chicago, DePaul is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the public relations program state that they receive average early career wages of $41,234.
Marquette University is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in public relations & advertising. Located in the city of Milwaukee, Marquette is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the public relations program make around $40,583 for their early career.
Miami University - Oxford is a large public university located in the town of Oxford.
Those public relations & advertising students who get their bachelor's degree from Miami University - Oxford make $9,847 more than the standard public relations graduate.
Located in the large city of Chicago, Loyola Chicago is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Public Relations & Advertising bachelor's degree recipients from Loyola University Chicago get an earnings boost of about $2,455 above the average income of public relations & advertising majors.
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).
Your choice of public relations & advertising 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
