If you plan on getting your master's degree in public relations & advertising, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #60 in the country in terms of popularity. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Public Relations & Advertising Master's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 86 master's degrees in public relations & advertising during the 2021-2022 academic year.
Learn how to use the latest technology and tactics to manage the flow of information between brands and the public with your Master's in Communication with a concentration in Public Relations at Southern New Hampshire University.
Keep your skills and knowledge at the forefront of new media technologies with this specialized online master's from Southern New Hampshire University.
Choosing a Great Public Relations & Advertising School for Your Master's Degree
The public relations master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality public relations program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we include a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master'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
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to public relations & advertising students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of public relations & advertising students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 easy is it for public relations & advertising to pay back their student loans after receiving their master's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized public relations & advertising related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for public relations & advertising students working on their master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Public Relations & Advertising Schools
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Public Relations & Advertising Master's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Featured Public Relations & Advertising Programs
Learn about start dates, transferring credits, availability of financial aid, and more by contacting the universities below.
Learn how to use the latest technology and tactics to manage the flow of information between brands and the public with your Master's in Communication with a concentration in Public Relations at Southern New Hampshire University.
Keep your skills and knowledge at the forefront of new media technologies with this specialized online master's from Southern New Hampshire University.
Northwestern University is a good decision for students pursuing a master's degree in public relations & advertising. Located in the city of Evanston, Northwestern is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Those public relations & advertising students who get their master's degree from Northwestern University earn $15,165 more than the average public relations graduate.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a wonderful decision for students interested in a master's degree in public relations & advertising. UIUC is a very large public university located in the small city of Champaign.
Soon after graduation, public relations master's recipients usually earn an average of $61,463 at the beginning of their careers.
Every student who is interested in a master's degree in public relations & advertising needs to look into DePaul University. DePaul is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Chicago.
Students who graduate with their master's from the public relations program report average early career wages of $57,884.
Today's business environment demands marketing professionals to be nimble. To strategically assess resources. To provide creative solutions on the fly.
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).
The public relations master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality public relations program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
