How to Pitch Dorm Therapy
Our goal at Dorm Therapy is to help our readers create spaces they love, no matter what their college experience looks like. Whether you’re living at home, commuting to class, living in a suite with six other friends, thinking about moving off-campus next semester, getting ready to study abroad, or riding out the remainder of your senior year in a dorm with your day-one freshman roomie, you’ll find how-tos, personal essays, roundups, shopping stories, and tons more content on our site that will help you feel at home at school. In order to ensure we’re telling the most timely stories and giving you the best how-to and DIY advice, we’re always looking to work with writers and content creators who have fresh, creative ideas and perspectives to share.
How to Submit Your Dorm Tour
We cannot wait to show off students’ spaces from all over the globe with our readers! We want to know everything about the living situations you’ve created for yourself (and, if applicable, your roommates!). You can submit your Dorm Tour by filling out this Formstack questionnaire, which ensures our editors will have everything they’ll need in order to review your space for publishing consideration. If your Dorm Tour meets our publishing criteria and expectations, we’ll get back to you and make sure we have all the details we need to publish your space on our site and socials. If we do choose to move forward with your Dorm Tour, you’ll receive a $150 payment for the social video footage we require.
How to Submit Your Dorm DIY
Have a Dorm DIY project you want us to see? Send it our way by submitting our Dorm DIY Formstack questionnaire! Don’t worry about taking the word “dorm” so literally here — we’re looking for any small-space project you completed that enhances your college living situation in some way! If your project meets our publishing criteria and expectations, we’ll get back to you and make sure we have all the details we need to publish your project on our site. (Please note: Submitting a Dorm DIY is an unpaid opportunity.)
How to Submit to Be a Student Contributing Editor
We’re always looking for new students to add to our Student Contributing Editor team! This is a paid opportunity, with a specific set of deliverables and deadlines, and we are reviewing applications on a rolling basis. You can submit an application at any time by following this link to submit your Student Contributing Editor application, but please keep in mind that we’ll be looking for editors around the following semester schedules:
- Fall semester: July to December
- Spring semester: January to May
- Summer semester: June to August
In order to apply, you must be at least 18 years old and currently attending school. If you don’t live in your campus dorm, that’s absolutely fine; we’re eager to work with students from all backgrounds and across majors. Previous writing, editing, and content creation experience is not required.
How to Submit a Story Pitch to Dorm Therapy
If you have an idea you think might be a good fit for Dorm Therapy, you can pitch it to us at info@dormtherapy.com. In order to make sure we can review it and give you feedback, here’s what you should keep in mind.
Please note: As of August 2023, we are not currently accepting Dorm Therapy pitches.
What to Include in Your Dorm Therapy Pitch
- First, make sure we haven’t already published what you plan to write about. But if you see something on our site that’s similar to your idea, don’t count yourself out. Even if we’ve published a similar topic already, let us know what you’d do to make your story different/new/more timely.
- Give us your angle in a paragraph or less. Your angle should give us the complete picture of what you’re going to write about and should include a description of reporting and sources you’ll include, your story format (personal essay, Q&A, how-to, explainer, listicle, shopping roundup, etc.), how many words, the imagery you’ll include, and anything else you think is important for us to know about. If you’re stumped on what to include, you should safely hit the high notes: What is your story about? Why are you telling it now? Why are you the person to write about this? How are you going to tell it? Be as specific and thorough as possible, but please do not attach a full draft for review.
- As best you can, include a working headline. We know at this stage your headline is just a placeholder for the final thing, so no pressure on making sure it’s perfect. But a working headline gives us an idea of the angle you’re hoping to take, and how you’d frame the topic (Is it a list? A feature? An explainer? A Q&A? A how-to? Something else entirely? We’d love to know!) so that we can anticipate how we’d work with you to package this story to be published on our site.
- Examples or clips of your previously published writing, your personal website, or author page, etc. If you’re pitching us, we’d love to read more of your work!
If you have an idea for a story but you’re not sure how to flesh out the final details, you can send us that idea, too! Just make sure to include as much information as possible so we can review your pitch in full before getting back to you.
Here’s a bit about our Dorm Therapy verticals.
- Dorm Tours: Where we take a peek into students’ homes all over the world to share inspo and stories about college living experiences.
- Style & Shopping: Where we track down all the products and details for all the trends so you can get the items you need and looks you love (and can afford).
- How-Tos: Where we share step-by-steps, tips, and hacks to inspire your next dorm room upgrade, whether you’re ready for a weekend project or you just want to figure out how the heck to organize your shoes.
- College Life: Where you’ll find RAs’ communal living pointers, roomie-turned-bestie Q&As, and advice for when you’re feeling homesick, stuck, and all the other things.
What Happens After You Send Your Pitch?
If an editor on Dorm Therapy wants to move forward with your pitch, you’ll receive a follow-up email, usually within two weeks.! This email will include the offered pay rate, expected deadline, brand/voice guidelines, and any adjustments to the format, length, or scope of the post. You’ll also have the email of the editor you’ll be working with, so feel free to direct any pressing Qs you have about your story directly to them.
Unfortunately, due to the volume of pitches we receive, we cannot always reply to pitches we’re not planning to move forward with. So if you haven’t heard back within two weeks, you can assume it’s safe to move on to another publication. If your story is timely, feel free to let us know you’ve taken your pitch elsewhere.
Questions, comments, concerns? You can get in touch with us at info@dormtherapy.com. Now that you know how to reach us, we can’t wait to hear from you!