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10 Percent of Colleges Check Applicants' Social Profiles
theodp writes "Confirming paranoid high-schoolers' fears, a new Kaplan survey reveals that 10% of admissions officers from prestigious schools said they had peeked at sites like Facebook and MySpace to evaluate college-bound seniors. Of those using the profiles, 38% said it had a 'negative impact' on the applicant. 'Today's application is not just what you send ... but whatever they can Google about you,' said Kaplan's Jeff Olson. At Notre Dame, assistant provost for enrollment Dan Saracino said he and his staff sometimes come across candidates portraying themselves in a less-than-flattering light. 'It's typically inappropriate photos — like holding up a can of beer at a party,' Saracino said. On the other hand, using the Internet to vet someone's character seems overly intrusive to Northwestern's Christopher Watson. 'We consider Facebook and MySpace their personal space,' the dean of undergraduate admissions said. 'It would feel somewhat like an invasion of privacy.'"
We recently discussed similar practices from prospective employers.
If you can't figure that out, you shouldn't be getting into good schools.
Don't put up what you don't want other people to see - I hear all about the new generation growing up with the Internet and Facebook being a part of their life.
But what about simple commonsense rules (either derived on their own or imbibed from parents)?
Would you make a fool of yourself in the street (OK, some people would)?
This is a completely legitimate practice. After all, if we don't catch people holding up cans of beer at a party before they are admitted, why, they'll be doing it at colleges around the country next before you know it!
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
'It's typically inappropriate photos â" like holding up a can of beer at a party,' Saracino said
Riiiight. Because nobody who has had a picture taken holding a can of beer could possibly benefit from a higher education, or be a net positive for society.
Cripes. Makes me glad I'm decades past my college days.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
for accuracy. First its really easy to blackmail someone by creating an account with their bio, and probably next to impossible to get it down. Secondly, esp. with more common names, its really easy to find someone with the same name who is totally unrelated to the applicant. Should you be judged based on what that person does? Finally, how many people actually take the time to really interpret what a quick google search reveals? A search for my real name without quotes, esp. my full name, reveals tons of porn. I guess I just better hope that nobody tries to search for me on the internet without taking the time to do a proper query(and even then all they will find is my embarrassing performance in the one and only sanctioned chess tournament I ever participated in....)
Monstar L
... "Because," Saracino continues, "Beer is not the sort of thing people drink at college."
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Their reliance on the fact that the profiles are "real"
Of those using the profiles, 38% said it had a 'negative impact' on the applicant. 'Today's application is not just what you send ... but whatever they can Google about you,'
Suppose a person has a grudge against you. They know you are applying for admission to a certain school. They know the school searches for myspace profiles or other profiles on social networking sites.
The person anonymizes themselves using proxies and creates a fake facebook or myspace profile. They use your name and general location: they include some nasty message/text that would be seen as highly negative.
The admissions office searches for your name. They find this page. They have no real way to verify whether or not you posted the page.
Their decision otherwise would be to admit you to their school, but they assume you posted this horrible page: it has your name, location, and a few other details that match their records, after all. Their assumption leads to a negative conclusion which prevents you from being admitted.
The person who posted the info is completely anonymous, and there is no means to locate the person.
What is your recourse? You will never actually be told the underlying reason for the rejection.
This is a reason universities should not be "searching" social network sites: until such time as the identity of the site's creator can be proven. They are creating a DoS opportunity for anonymous people to prevent other people from being admitted.
'We consider Facebook and MySpace their personal space,' the dean of undergraduate admissions said. 'It would feel somewhat like an invasion of privacy.'"
They're being overly sensitive. MySpace isn't private. Information put on the internet, publicly available without a password or other security, should be considered as public as anything on a community bulletin board.
That's why deeplinking is legal, to refer to the discussion from a few days ago.
Also, a simple MySpace check can probably tell the college a vast amount of detail about the student... and their level of stupidity. Responsibility and Judgment should be rewarded.
It doesn't have to be a photo you posted... but someone else could have posted it and tagged you! You essentially have to start assuming that any digital photo taken of you will end up online with your name. Quite scary. Would be nice if there sere some sort of consent-based tagging, requiring your approval, but that's probably too complicated for Facebook to think about.
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The obvious next step is to make your profile a promotional tool. The "high achiever profile" may be the next big thing. You addressing the Junior Chamber of Commerce. You working on a political campaign. You being interviewed on TV.
Soon, this will be a routine part of getting into college, and there will be services to do this for you.
Since when has a school been *just* about academics? Isn't it also about the 'life experience' aspect too?
Since when has a 'job' *just* been about 'performance'? Doesn't your personality and ability to fit in with others have anything to do with how well you'll do on a job?
creation science book
There was a recent post on the physics group blog Cosmic Variance about potential job applicants having webpages and getting Googled during the course of hiring for academic positions- postdocs and faculty. So it's not just the students, it's faculty as well.
There are lots of questions you can't have on a job application (sexual orientation, religion, etc.) but if an applicant volunteers that information, that is permitted. And the attitude seems to be that if information is on a webpage, it is "volunteered" to the world.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
If you post stuff about yourself that reflects badly on you, you have no grounds for complaint. Live with the consequences of your actions or don't post. Underage drinking may or may not be a bad idea; telling the world about it definitely is. Why should a college want to admit a moron with no judgment?
I piss off bigots.
I think you kind of missed the point. Said individuals holding the beer were in high school (AKA this is why they were applying to colleges) and, as such, were illegally in possession of beer.
That's why it was inappropriate.
It is going to be rough for a while, but I hope that we can watch a new norm get created as a generation who puts their frontstage and backstage personalities waaay too close together online grows up and becomes dominant.
Pop quiz: you are at a co-worker's desk looking at the monitor and working on something. An IM pops up. Do you avert your eyes? It is dreadfully hard, but we have to try. Folks conduct personal business at work. The internet makes that easy. We need to respect that and avert our eyes when they do it.
Myspace profiles are a microcosm of the internet: the good and the terrible are side by side in the same place. You have to learn the skill of knowing when not to look, because the only thing stopping you is you. Just because you CAN look at EVERYTHING doesn't mean you should. Just because it is information on the 'public' internet doesn't mean you should look at it. You should treat it as private just as soon as you realize it is something that the individual in question thinks is private.
Even if you don't follow these rules yourself, I bet you still implicitly follow them a little better than the college admissions boards who really have no clue and no experience with trying to keep public and private personas online. Things will change, if we give it time.