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.
College Factual looked at 12 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Public Relations & Advertising Bachelor's Degree Schools in California ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 618 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.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Public Relations & Advertising Bachelor's Degree Schools in California list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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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University of Southern California is a great decision for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in public relations & advertising. USC is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Los Angeles.
Those public relations & advertising students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Southern California earn $9,599 more than the typical public relations graduate.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in public relations & advertising needs to check out Pepperdine University. Located in the large suburb of Malibu, Pepperdine is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Public Relations & Advertising bachelor's degree recipients from Pepperdine University earn a boost of around $5,546 over the typical income of public relations & advertising graduates.
It's difficult to beat Chapman University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in public relations & advertising. Chapman is a medium-sized private not-for-profit university located in the midsize city of Orange.
After graduation, public relations bachelor's recipients typically earn around $40,141 at the beginning of their careers.
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in public relations & advertising needs to check out San Diego State University. SDSU is a fairly large public university located in the large city of San Diego.
Bachelor's recipients from the public relations & advertising major at San Diego State University get $3,755 more than the average college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
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:
