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Report: 80% of College Admissions Departments Check Applicants’ Facebook Pages

by Robert Quigley | 2:37 pm, February 25th, 2011

If you’re a college senior currently applying to college and you “like” this post on Facebook, be warned: There’s a decent chance that the admissions departments at schools where you’re applying are keeping tabs. (Hopefully, they will note your excellent taste in blogs.) A recent Kaplan survey found that admissions departments at 80% of top colleges “visited potential students’ online profiles during their recruiting process.”

Allison Otis, who runs a blog about her experience interviewing applicants to Harvard, speculates on the real impact that indiscreet social media profiles can have on kids’ admission chances:

I doubt that hordes of students frequently lose scholarships or have an admission reneg’d for something that they innocently put up on Facebook. BUT what actually happens is much worse. Indiscreet social media postings can make your interviewer (or the admissions officer) prejudiced against you without realizing it. And that’s scary and worrisome because a large chunk of admissions decisions are really close calls. They are based on “fit” and “feel” – it’s not just what you’ve shown you can do, but the potential people think you have.

The obvious takeaway here, which applies to people of all ages: Keep personal Facebook pages pages private. Seriously.

(via AllFacebook)

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QHUNHQWFWIT46XWDSRP2ZO6MY4 Susie Watts

    As a college consultant, I always tell my high school students that they should not post anything on Facebook that they would not like their parents or grandparents to see. They should also use a specific email address for all of their college correspondence. This is how most colleges and universities communicate with students and they should not see an email address that causes them to make a premature judgment on a student.

    College Direction
    Denver, Colorado

  • Noneofyourbusiness_5678

    How sad (and, stressful) for our children, and future generations. These are their supposed private conversations with trusted friends, family and allies. Although it is 2012, they will be forever living in 1984.


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