College Applicants, Beware: Your Facebook Page Is Showing

[question everything]

College Applicants, Beware: Your Facebook Page Is Showing
By JOHN HECHINGER
WSJ 9/18/08

High-school seniors already fretting about grades and test scores now have another worry: Will their Facebook or MySpace pages count against them in college admissions? A new survey of 500 top colleges found that 10% of admissions officers acknowledged looking at social-networking sites to evaluate applicants. Of those colleges making use of the online information, 38% said that what they saw "negatively affected" their views of the applicant. Only a quarter of the schools checking the sites said their views were improved, according to the survey by education company Kaplan, a unit of Washington Post Co.

Some admissions officers said they had rejected students because of material on the sites. Jeff Olson, who heads research for Kaplan's test-preparation division, says one university did so after the student gushed about the school while visiting the campus, then trashed it online. Kaplan promised anonymity to the colleges, of which 320 responded. The company surveyed schools with the most selective admissions. Admissions officers have acknowledged looking at social-networking sites like Facebook to evaluate applicants.

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The lack of rules is already provoking debate among admissions officers. Some maintain that applicants' online data are public information that schools should vet to help protect the integrity of the institutions. Others say they are uncomfortable flipping through teenage Facebook pages. Colleges' recent interest in social-networking sites is leading many aspiring students to take a hard look at their online habits and in some cases to remove or change postings. With a high-school graduating class nationwide of 3.3 million students, colleges are expected to be sifting through a record number of applications this year.

(snip)

But Kaplan and many high-school guidance counselors say students often don't restrict public access on social-networking sites and, in any case, damaging information can find a way to leak out. David Hawkins, director of public policy and research for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, a professional organization, says schools don't have time to scour the Internet systematically to check out thousands of applicants. But he says admissions officers at times receive anonymous tips, which may be from rival applicants, about embarrassing Facebook or MySpace material, such as a picture of a student drunk at an underage party. In another recent study, Nora Ganim Barnes, director of the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, found that 21% of colleges used social-networking sites for recruiting prospects and gathering information about applicants. It's especially common when universities are awarding scholarships because it isn't hard to go online for a handful of finalists. "No one wants to be on the front page of the newspaper for giving a scholarship to a murderer," she says. "Everybody is trying to protect their brands."

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122170459104151023.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal (subscription)

[TNDemo]

1. But you have to be a friend on facebook to see the page.

It can be public on myspace but not on facebook as far as I know.

[the_realist]

2. Agreed

There's some myth out there among luddites that Facebook pages and drunken pics are available for the world to see. Obviously, not true if you have your settings set.

[Ex Lurker]

4. but a lot of them don't....

and even more will be friends with anybody sends them a message. I mean how many people have a thousand friends in real life?

[Ex Lurker]

3. that depends

on how they set their privacy settings. If they don't restrict it, you can see their page if you're in their network, ie, school, town, etc. It's amazing what's out there. These kids don't seem to understand the concept of personal privacy.