A tangible wave of calm washed over high school juniors and seniors everywhere today when it was announced that college admissions advisors rarely, if ever, check the social networks of their applicants.
For some this comes as a sigh of relief; it’s no secret that high school students of varying ages take part in a multitude of wild extracurricular activities. Those who partake in such events cleverly disguise or censor bottles and red Solo cups in photographs in an attempt to appear as if all events are perfectly legal.
For others this may come as an embarrassment. To avoid detection by employers or colleges, some students have taken on quasi-ridiculous pseudonyms on their Facebook profiles, while other students have created entirely separate public accounts to keep their “real life” accounts hidden from the rest of the world.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that, according to a study by test prep company Kaplan, “fewer than 1 in 3” admissions officers take the time to evaluate the social presence of individual applicants.
The fairness of socially researching applicants have been brought into question recently, and though some believe the method to be a perfectly viable way of calculating admissions chances, other believe separating personal activities from educational ones is far more important.
“That’s their private space. I just think it’s the wrong thing to do. Imagine if we could remove ourselves to an age when people wrote wonderful letters back and forth. We wouldn’t be searching through that. So I think it’s wrong to do just because it’s there,” says Richard Shaw, dean of admissions at Stanford University. Â
Outside of keeping personal and professional separate, many admissions representatives simply don’t have the time to socially “creep” on their respective applicants. Many universities receive tens of thousands of applications from students nationwide, so sorting through each and every one of the networks for these applicants just isn’t worth the time or the hassle – especially if some applicants had more common names than others. What happens when one John Smith gets confused for another John Smith, even though the former has served time in juvenile detention while the latter was valedictorian of his class?
It all comes down to being careful with what you share online. The internet is not Vegas – what happens on the web is shared ten times over and seen by thousands. Posting pictures of underage drinking or sleeping in class might be admired by your friends, but in the eyes of the small number of college representatives that do look up their applicants, you could end up losing a shot at going to your dream school.