Deadline
Entry Deadline: (Uploaded by) Friday, July 31, 2026 by 11:59 p.m. Central Time
Please read all the information regarding this competition.
Judging
All entries are judged by qualified media and advertising professionals. No member of the CMBAM board or any CMBAM member school will assist in judging.
Best Program Awards
Categories are separated into two divisions: products and sales and marketing. The school with the highest total points in each division will receive awards for:
- Best College Media Production program
- Best College Media Sales and Marketing program
For all categories, we encourage our judges to award a first, second, and third-place winner. Judges may decide to award honorable mentions.
Points are awarded to a school in each category following this scale:
- 1st place: 8 points
- 2nd place: 5 points
- 3rd place: 3 points
- Honorable Mention: 1 point
Ties will be decided by the most first-place awards, followed by total awards in the Division.
Rules, Eligibility & Disqualifications
Categories, rules, judging criteria, and entry instructions for each category are outlined in the contest rules. All entries must have been published or used by the college media company between June 1, 2025, and May 31, 2026.
Each category will list the number of submissions possible directly after the title of the category in the contest rules. If there are more submissions than the category allows, the first entries in those categories will be the submissions judged. All subsequent submissions will be discarded.
All entries must have been originally developed by a current CMBAM member with membership dues paid by the time of entry. All entries must be wholly designed and produced by student staff members of the publication. For personnel awards, nominees must have been full-time students during the time represented in their entries. Accomplishments cited in the nomination materials must emphasize the impact of the person’s work at the CMBAM member college media company on or between June 1, 2025, and May 31, 2026. Nominees must have worked at the media company for at least three months during that time.
Entries improperly or incompletely prepared or uploaded will be reviewed for errors. The Member Recognition and Awards Director will attempt to correct minor errors, but rules will be strictly enforced, without exception. Failure to comply with the contest entry rules will result in disqualification from the category for which submitted.
Please refer to the individual category descriptions and rules for detailed explanations of requirements.
File submission guidelines:
- Use this naming convention for files: category number_org name_college/university. DO NOT use spaces, commas, or special characters.
- Here is a sample file name: P1_MinnesotaDaily_UniversityOfMinnesota
- If you are submitting multiple entries, please add an underscore and number of the entry to the name: P1_MinnesotaDaily_UniversityOfMinnesota_1
- All individual and general category submissions should be submitted as a single reduced-file-size PDF.
- Specified digital/photo category submissions should be submitted as a single .JPG, .GIF or .PNG file.
- Specified multimedia category submissions should be submitted as a URL that links to the correct file/webpage.
- Individual files should not exceed 100MB.
Awards distribution
Awards will be presented Nov. 12 in a ceremony at our fall conference in Austin, Texas. For schools that are not able to attend the conference, awards will be mailed afterward.
Questions
If you still have questions about the contest or your entries after reading the entry instructions, please contact CMBAM Member Recognition and Awards Director, Rob Steedley, by email at awards@cmbam.org.
Contest Entry
All schools with an active membership as of June 12, were sent instructions to reset their login credentials on our redesigned website. Instructions were emailed to your school’s primary contact person by Sam Oldenburg, the Vice President of Membership. If you did not receive those instructions or have any issues logging in with your CMBAM.org account, email Sam at membership@cmbam.org.
You must be logged in with an active CMBAM membership to access the entry forms linked below.