Find top-ranked online bachelor’s in marketing and advertising degree programs to prepare students for roles like market research analysts, advertising sales agents, and public relations specialists.
A bachelor’s degree in marketing and advertising is a great way to put your social media knowledge, creativity, and analytical skills to professional use. With programs available both online and in person, students can earn the roughly 120 required credits in an environment that best suits their needs.
This four-year degree challenges students to think strategically and creatively while they take courses covering topics like consumer behavior, business ethics, advertising, and market research. Students may also have the option to choose a concentration, such as social media marketing or business analytics.
Career opportunities in this field can be lucrative, and graduates with this degree are often prepared for roles like market research analysts, advertising sales agents, and public relations specialists.
Learn more about how to major in marketing.
Pursing your degree online doesn’t mean you need to settle for a inferior school. Today, most universities and colleges offer online degrees, and many respected schools are seeing significant growth in their numbers of online students.
The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great. This is why influence — i.e., the academic impact of faculty and alumni associated with a school — gets at the heart of what is truly best in education. The combined influence score of a college or university’s top academic influencers is the best indicator of academic excellence. For our online degree rankings, we focus on the academic influence of faculty and alumni in the specific disciplines we’re ranking.
If you are serious about finding the best online colleges, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching, and whether their graduates themselves are advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence. Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Influence, as measured by our InfluenceRanking engine, provides a ranking that is free from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
72%
Student body
35K
Median SAT/ACT
1210/27
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Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
58%
Graduation
67%
Student body
48K
Median SAT/ACT
1195/25
View profile
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
88%
Graduation
65%
Student body
24K
Median SAT/ACT
1115/22
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Tuition + fees
$10K
Acceptance
85%
Graduation
52%
Student body
17K
Median SAT/ACT
1120/22
View profile
Tuition + fees
$29K
Acceptance
53%
Graduation
55%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
1130/24
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Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
95%
Graduation
53%
Student body
19K
Median SAT/ACT
1080/21
View profile
Tuition + fees
$20K
Acceptance
82%
Graduation
48%
Student body
8K
Median SAT/ACT
985/20
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Tuition + fees
$10K
Acceptance
94%
Graduation
37%
Student body
84K
View profile
Tuition + fees
$29K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
73%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
1255/27
View profile
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
64%
Graduation
51%
Student body
9K
View profile
Tuition + fees
$5K
Acceptance
75%
Graduation
56%
Student body
26K
Median SAT/ACT
1160/24
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Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
81%
Graduation
61%
Student body
19K
Median SAT/ACT
1227/25
View profile
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
76%
Graduation
52%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
1090/21
View profile
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
87%
Graduation
58%
Student body
17K
Median SAT/ACT
1140/24
View profile
Tuition + fees
$31K
Acceptance
93%
Graduation
62%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1085/22
View profile
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
67%
Graduation
39%
Student body
5K
Median SAT/ACT
1155/21
View profile
Tuition + fees
$15K
Acceptance
50%
Graduation
54%
Student body
75K
Median SAT/ACT
1150/24
View profile
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
82%
Graduation
57%
Student body
27K
View profile
Tuition + fees
$38K
Acceptance
72%
Graduation
83%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
1240/27
View profile
Tuition + fees
$13K
Acceptance
87%
Graduation
47%
Student body
23K
View profile
Tuition + fees
$42K
Acceptance
70%
Graduation
70%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
1165/24
View profile
Tuition + fees
$32K
Acceptance
61%
Graduation
46%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1076/22
View profile
Tuition + fees
$29K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
58%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1075/21
View profile
Tuition + fees
$31K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
56%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1114/21
View profile
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
35%
Student body
12K
View profile
If this is your first time taking an online course, the experience may require a time of adjustment. Although you’ll typically learn the same material and take the same exams as your on-campus peers, going online will require greater independence and responsibility than going in person. You’ll be accountable for your own time management, for harnessing the online educational technology that you’ll need to use, and for completing the course requirements, such as listening to lectures, learning lessons, reading texts, and handing in assignments. This means you’ll need to create a suitable workspace for yourself, maintain a realistic schedule, and take the initiative in building relationships with your instructors and classmates. With online college, your goal is to find a balance between independence and engagement.
No. The only part of online education that’s easier than campus-based education is ease of access: all you need is a computer and an internet connection for online education. But even this seeming advantage of online education can be misleading: what’s easier, studying online with your computer and internet connection from your home where you need to cook, clean, pay rent, and maintain a job? Or studying on campus in a dorm where all your living needs are handled by the school, and college staff are there to help you every step of the way?
If you take the commute to campus out of the equation, campus-based education is easier. All the support structures available on campus for students, especially with real people to help you in person, are not there online. The demands on you as an online student will largely be the same as for your campus-based counterpart, but without the same helps.
In general, your online courses will present the same material and test you in the same way as traditional in-person courses. In many cases, you’ll even have the same instructors as your on-campus counterparts. In fact, if you are adjusting to the experience of independent learning with remote educational technology for the first time, online college may be considerably more challenging than campus-based college. For a few insights on how to manage this new online experience, check out our 10 Tips for Adjusting to School Online.
Accreditation is especially important when it comes to online college. This is because the online education landscape is a mix of highly-reputable non-profit institutions on the one end and less-than-reputable for-profit institutions on the other end. Accreditation gives you the power to identify the more reputable actors in online education. Accreditation is a stamp of approval from an independent accrediting agency indicating that a college or university is meeting standards of quality and credibility. School-wide accreditation falls into two major categories: regional and national accreditation. Regional accreditors generally hold jurisdiction only over schools in the states comprising their region, whereas national accreditors hold jurisdiction over schools in all states. Regional accreditation is widely regarded as a more rigorous standard of quality and credibility than national accreditation.
Attending a college or university that is not regionally accredited could limit your opportunities. For students seeking an online education, we strongly recommend that they opt for regionally accredited schools. Regional accreditation ensures eligibility for federal loans and grants, ensures your college credits can be transferred between schools, and ensures that your degree credits can be accepted if you wish to earn an advanced degree. For more on this important topic, check out our What is Accreditation and Why Does It Matter? College & University Accreditation Guide.
As long as your online college degree is regionally accredited (see the previous point), you should have little difficulty transferring most of your credits or credentials to another regionally accredited undergraduate school. Every school carries its own standards and procedures for granting a transfer of credits. In many cases, you will encounter some bureaucratic haggling in which some of your credits will be transferred and others may be refused. However, provided that you have attended an online school with recognized regional accreditation, you should be in good shape in transferring your credits earned online.
In most cases, as long you graduate from a well-regarded, regionally-accredited online college, prospective employers won’t look sideways at your degree. In fact, unless you attend an exclusively online college or university, there will likely be no specific indicator on your degree, transcript, or resumé differentiating your school from its brick-and-mortar counterpart. This means that your employer will likely only differentiate between an online and in-person degree if you mention this distinction.
Some employers may express the concern that because you did your degree online, you may need to transition from an online education experience to in-person workplace experience. But in an age of Covid, that concern seems much diminished. The fact is that much employment these days is remote. And collaboration increasingly happens online over Zoom. Many employers will therefore view your online degree as evidence of valuable 21st century professional skills such as independence, self-motivation, time management, and tech savvy.
If you are a student who thrives on the dynamic energy of in-person discussion, who requires the physical surroundings of a classroom to feel engaged, or who considers the social aspects of education to be of equal importance to the actual content of your courses, online education will be less than ideal for you (though depending on your circumstances, it may also be the only viable option).
While there is much in traditional campus-based education that can be substituted or simulated through the online medium, some students may find that there is nothing that can replace the conversation, collaboration, and motivation that occur in an actual in-person classroom setting. As you transition to online education, one of the biggest challenges you will likely face in getting the most out of your online classes is overcoming this difference between “real reality” and “virtual reality.” Fortunately, we’ve got some great Tips for Online Education Beginners.
The advantages of online classes are many. Above all, online courses give you the freedom and flexibility to attend class from anywhere that works for you, whether you’re at home, in a coffee shop, or in a quiet conference room at work. In many cases, you’ll also enjoy the convenience of asynchronous learning opportunities—educational experiences that you can complete at your own pace and on your own schedule. This may include pre-taped lectures, ongoing chat-board discussions, and 24/7 access to digital materials. And of course, just as there are some learners who prefer the energy of a live classroom, there are those who learn best when working in their own personal space, free from distractions. If this sounds like you, you might find the solitude of online learning to be a major advantage.
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College Strategist
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