Getting accepted by CUNY?

[HannahCB]

I'm going to be a university senior at Bowling Green in Ohio with a 3.36 general GPA and a 4.0 GPA in my major (print journalism).

I wrote for my school's newsmagazine all throughout high school and won a highly competitive internship at the Dayton Daily News for four summers, and I'm completing the fourth now. During university, I've written several columns for the school's newspaper as well as two feature stories for the university's magazine (and I plan on writing two more this upcoming year). I will have to complete one more internship to graduate, so that will be on my CUNY application as well. I'm also maintaining a blog about women's issues.

I'm also a member of a sorority. I studied abroad for a full year. My minor is popular culture. And I would definitely have stellar letters of recommendation.

Do any current or former CUNY students/applicants have any advice? I'm going to try to raise my general GPA to a 3.5 or 3.6. I'm worried that my undergrad university is not prestigious enough, though. The Dayton Daily News was literally the best internship I could possibly get, especially fresh out of high school. I'm also worried I might not have enough experience with campus media - would never being an editor of a school newspaper or magazine hurt my chances?

I would definitely appreciate any advice on how to make my way through the application process, as well as advice on how I should improve my resume. Thanks so much!

[GwenWoods]

I probably wouldn't worry too much about where you did your undergrad, and studying abroad might help too.

How many clips, overall, do you estimate you have from campus publications, and how many from Dayton Daily News?

If it was easy to become an editor at your paper, it might hurt as you'll probably be competing against a lot of people who were editors for several years. Most of the people I know who were accepted to top schools were all full-time editors of a campus publication at some point. Additionally, I'd try to add a bit more diversity with this next internship since you have four years of the same thing.