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10 Percent of Colleges Check Applicants' Social Profiles
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Sep 21, 2008 10:58 AM
from the mood:-unsurprised dept.
from the mood:-unsurprised dept.
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.
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Ned Nederlander writes "CareerBuilder's new survey finds: 'Of those hiring managers who have screened job candidates via social networking profiles, one-third (34 percent) reported they found content that caused them to dismiss the candidate from consideration.' Some red flags: content about applicant using drugs or drinking, inappropriate photos and bad-mouthing former bosses."
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The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't figure that out, you shouldn't be getting into good schools.
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Insightful)
take responsibility for your own actions?
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Funny)
Punch him in the face?
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Interesting)
I think people (meaning those rejecting college applications) need to stop being so uptight.
I drink beer. So what?
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice wish, and in an ideal world it would be so.
Unfortunately, that is NOT the world we live in.....so, get used to it. Publishing photos of your self, nekkid, with a bottle of Jack in one hand, and a skull bong in the other can keep you out of a good school. It can also keep you out of a good job later in life.
And Lord help you if you ever wanted to get into politics later in life, that stuff will last forever, and can and will be dug up to be used against you.
Yep, it would be great if people weren't so uptight, but, alas....that is not the world we live in.
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Insightful)
I think people (meaning those rejecting college applications) need to stop being so uptight.
I drink beer. So what?
Probably because if an applicant is willing to disregard the laws in order to underage drink or perform other illegal activities and flaunt them on the internet then likely he or she have no qualms with breaking the college honor code.
When Admissions has at least an order of magnitude more applications than open slots, they can afford to be picky about those things.
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a missing piece here that comes in by implication: that drinking beer would be seen as a blemish on your image at all in the first place.
As a non-USian it's hard for me to attribute a reason to that. My first guesses would be:
- a tradition of puritanical views on drinking
- an overwhelming law-abidingness that views even a single lapse of an insignificant regulation as a major character flaw
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:4, Insightful)
take responsibility for your own actions?
And what exactly does that mean in practise? If everything private is free to be put on the Intarwebs by someone else, then you don't have a private life. It doesn't mean that you have to be ashamed of it or anything, but it means it's no longer private. There's a difference between "taking responsibility" by using a condom when banging your girlfriend and "taking responsibility" for the video being on porntube against your will. I think you can find many examples of socially accepted behaviour where putting it online isn't if you think about it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, it means not drinking at age 17 in a country where the drinking age is 21. (...) Your examples are silly; placing pornography of a highschool student online is highly likely to be child pornography
Sorry, I forget I'm talking about freak country. At 16 about 84% of our teens have drunk alcohol (legal age 18), and noone would freak if they say a 16yo with a beer bottle. Also, at 17 about half our teens will have had sex, yes technically it'd be child porn here too (legal age for porn 18, but age of consent 16) and they'd probably be chasing who uploaded it but it's not unusual for a 17yo to have a sex life.
The problem is simply publishing without consent;
There we agree, it's just that "take responsibility for your actions" is a completely meaningless
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep I agree... at least where I'm from, people start partying at age 15-16, so that by the time they're doing their masters degree, they have not only passed the binge phase but they also have developed their social skills. By the time they're legal and hit the bars, they're hopefully experienced enough to stay out of trouble. It's far better to make your first mistakes in the safety of a friend's living room or cottage, than to puke all over some guy's dick in the back of a bar then spend the night in a holding cell for trying to score dope off a narc.
I'm not saying everyone needs to be a drugged-up drunken whore, but there should be more tolerance and understanding of the process. Prohibition only makes the problem worse, and uptight admissions officers / employers / parents are sending out the wrong message.
Is it alright to party ? Hell yes, just be reasonable about it and don't show up to school/work intoxicated. How can teens learn to be reasonable if they don't party at all ?
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Funny)
Ahhh......the good old days!!
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Informative)
Do you think that they'd be drinking with their parents vs. their friends even if it were legalized?
No. But I think they would have been drinking with their parents before wandering off to drink with their friends, and that they might be going into those situations with a better understanding of what alcohol is and how it affects them.
Here's my experience: my parents let me drink a little every now and then when I was younger (~15/16), and they explained how tell when I'd had enough. Of course, later on (~16/17) I started going off drinking with my friends. Yeah, I got really drunk a few times. But I never got yelled at for it, in fact my parents laughed at me the first time I woke them up stumbling in late and then puking my guts out at 4AM. I ended up being the first one of the bunch to figure out the trick of having enough and no more. So I'm the one that remembers what happened when, and I'm the one that had the most fun at parties during those years, and I'm the one that stopped a lot of really reckless shit that might have caused some serious injuries or property damage. The rest of them didn't figure any of that out until a few years later.
Why? Because they were drinking to be rebellious, and all that wonderful crap. Freaking their parents out was something they were proud of, they bragged abobut it all the time. I heard about lots of (and witnessed a few) times when their parents would totally snap out on them and do pretty much anything except discussing it reasonably. They didn't care, that's what it was about to them. Establishing the boundaries between their free will and what their parents could make them do.
And no, I'm not somehow inherently more responsible than the rest of them - pretty much the instant the whole it's illegal/defy the parents/be a rebel thing expired they turned into normal people that drink socially and never drive drunk or try to set fire to things just because they're flammable. It's the whole prohibitionist shit seriously warping young people's minds - we need to stop doing it as a society.
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're already partying and binge drinking in high school, I can't imagine yourself making a dramatic voluntary change in college.
If you're not partying by the time you hit college, I'd say there's something wrong. Binge drinking ain't for everyone, but everyone should at least have a bit of fun in life.
If holding a beer in a photo is an excuse to consider someone "irresponsible", well then I got two middle fingers with Dan Saracino's name on them.
The teenage years are about making connections, learning one's limits and getting ready for the rest of your long repetitive bullshit life. I'd much rather have someone who partied in their teens, got their fill and settled down in the later years, than a goody-two-shoes that's going to be consumed with jealousy and go apeshit in their early thirties.
The whole US college system makes less and less sense with each passing year. That's where they're breeding all this passive-aggressive nonsense that transpires in every business transaction, every press release, every visit to the doctor. I don't care if a kid is a freaking genius, if he/she doesn't have a good life balance they won't get much accomplished in the end.
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're already partying and binge drinking in high school, I can't imagine yourself making a dramatic voluntary change in college.
That doesn't even begin to match up with what I've seen around me. Of my friends in high school there's a group of around 20 that were pretty heavy drinkers by the time they turned 18 (the legal age where I live). Oh, and they did a lot of drugs, too. And they skipped classes a lot, and half of them dropped out of school. They were pretty much your typical "gonna be a rock star" crowd (which is why I hung out with them - we all loved the same sort of music). By age 19/20 most of them were complete fuckups, as you'd expect, and I absolutely guarantee you that somewhere on the internet there are pictures of them doing some pretty fucked up shit.
And then they, for various reasons, grew up. Some got kicked out of home and had to cope. Others had kids and suddenly realized they had to care for them. Whatever the causes, within the next four years all but two had stopped the heavy partying, stopped doing drugs altogether, were working hard and paying rent on their little apartments. That was three years ago and every single one of them (except the two who will probably never have their shit together) have either trained into a trade, or gone back to school, or worked their way up to a management position in their companies. They own homes, and pay their bills every month. The ones with kids are either taking care of them themselves or (where the relationships fell apart) making regular support payments. None of them are living on welfare (not even the two who will probably be fighting their addictions till they die) or begging on the street or robbing people.
That matches up pretty well with what other people my age observed in their social circles, and even what older people I know remember of the "loser" crowd from when they were young. No, not everyone is going to turn their lives around, but in my experience and that of many others I know the vast majority of the people you'd have written off in high school as utter failures do manage to build a good respectable life for themselves in the end.
So no, I don't buy the whole "if you failed in high school you'll fail forever" mentality. People certainly do change, and I'd be pretty appalled if industry and educational institutions were to deny these good, solid, hardworking people a future because they did some dumb shit almost a decade ago.
Then again maybe social pressures are different enough where you live that everyone that parties hard in their youth does end up an alcoholic, I don't know, you'll have to enlighten us.
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, if you ever want to do anything but be a bum, you have to live life like Ward Cleaver.
A world were "holding up a can of beer at a party" is something that should disqualify anyone from anything is not a world I want to live in. There are several pictures of me holding a beer or a glass of wine on Facebook. They don't reflect anything remotely negative about me.
Yes, people should use judgment (i.e. not let pictures of themselves naked, etc. onto the Internet), but I shouldn't have to be held hostage by people's crazy hangups. People don't always just sit in their houses and read the New York Times.
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Insightful)
> take responsibility for your own actions?
So are you trying to say that people shouldn't drink, have sex, or do anything else that others would consider inappropriate so as to ensure such actions could never be photographed and posted online? Or when you say "your own actions" you mean the actions of the person that's taking the picture and then posting it?
There are a lot of things that people can do very responsibly, like drinking and having sex, and I for one don't care (in principle) if the events are cataloged by photo or what have you. The trouble is, however, that other (such as these colleges) view such behavior as 'inappropriate'. That's why many people will not post such things on the internet. The problem here is that some people _will_ post pictures/accounts regardless of the wishes of those in the pictures/accounts. So unless your idea of taking responsibility involves a shotgun, I fail to see how it, in any way, helps the situation.
(Of course, the real problem lies in the hypocrisy of the admissions boards. I highly doubt that they never went to parties or had sex or did something that looked stupid for laughs. But for some reason the fact that these kids doing the same means that the will make shitty students? Give me a break. I've got a lot of respect for those boards that consider these pages to be personal and don't look as to avoid biasing themselves with information they know isn't relevant.)
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true. It is also true that if you think what someone puts on Facebook and MySpace is relevant to their academic performance, then you shouldn't be in charge of admissions decisions for a good school, or any school. If you think it's relevant to job performance, you shouldn't be making hiring decisions, either.
There. That disposes of the question of what people "shouldn't" be doing. Now, back to the real world.
Parent
School and work are not one-dimensional (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Parent
Re:School and work are not one-dimensional (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't go to college for the "life experience." I go for the degree. If socialization was the goal, I'd do it without spending thousands of dollars a semester.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yes. If someone does not have photos at party, it means he doesn't fit with others well.
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true. It is also true that if you think what someone puts on Facebook and MySpace is relevant to their academic performance, then you shouldn't be in charge of admissions decisions for a good school, or any school. If you think it's relevant to job performance, you shouldn't be making hiring decisions, either.
I'll play devil's advocate here. I happen to agree that this kind of thing shouldn't matter, but I think I understand the admissions perspective:
For the college admissions people this is an odds game. The number of applicants who are qualified based on test scores, grades and all the normal junk is larger than the number of spaces they have. Given this, how do they pare it down? Perhaps Googling or checking out the Facebook/MySpace pages for some of the "borderline" students is more practical than throwing darts? I'm guessing their belief is that a student who gave in to peer pressure and the like in high school has worse odds of being successful in college where such pressures go unchecked by parents, etc. I'm not saying it's right, but I think I see where they're coming from.
Now, all of that being said, I think students who are somewhat sheltered in high school are just as likely, and perhaps even more likely, to succumb to the temptations and pressures of college life. I've seen more than a couple people who were honors students in high school simply go off the deep end upon arriving at college. Conversely, I've known several who were "party types" in high school who decided that it was time to get serious about life when they got to college and have been very successful since then. It's just really hard to know how people will react until you do the experiment.
I for one am glad that MySpace and camera phones weren't around when I was a teenager!
Parent
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I don't think it's moot. The idea that semantics can be played here means that a given percentile of the populace will be confused and not understand the dangers of posting a picture of their friend on the internet passed out, with the caption including their name and the particular substance involved. So a future employer check their myspace page, and pages of all his best friends. One lost job in the making, and not through personal mistakes, but because friends talk too much.
Personal information on the Internet is dangerous. My own family mocks my attempts to tell them not to do it, and to be very careful about what their friends post. Despite that there are pictures that are less than complimentary on line of them. I don't think that anyone can stress enough how those semantics will not protect them from a nosy prospective employer.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The upcoming generation seem to take a lot of pictures (often unflattering or just silly) of themselves and their friends, and post them straight to their blogs or other pages. So it seems to me the future bunch of CEOs and bosses would probably have plenty of pictures of them passed out/drunk on such sites, maybe even w
Common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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)?
Re:Common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny how most parents spend a considerable amount of time telling their kids "it doesn't matter what other people think" when it comes to things like peer pressure or social interaction, and then we go right back around and tell them it's important what other people think and your life is ruined if you make a fool out of yourself, whether on the street or online.
It's either one or the other, people. Either it doesn't matter what people think, and you can wear a toga when you're sweeping your lawn with a vacuum cleaner, or it matters what people think and you should be devastated that Kristen thinks you're a retard because you won't spend 150$ on a pair of jeans.
Or maybe, just maybe, parents should be telling their kids the truth: "it always matters what important people think, but determining importance is an exercise in good judgment. Since you're a teenager, your judgment sucks, so I'll decide for you who should be important to you."
I'm sure this wouldn't come over so well stated precisely like that, but I'm sure someone could come up with a better way of saying it.
Parent
Re:Common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Fair enough. People should be careful what they post (I know I am).
But in another sense, this issues is shining a light on a fundamental hypocrisy in our society. Were teens before the Internet angels? I think not. They vandalized, they drank, they did drugs, they pushed boundaries... just like the teens of today. But, their actions were easier to keep private. Now with SMS, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Google, etc., all these kinds of things are more consistently cataloged and disseminated. Even if you don't post it yourself, a friend (or enemy) might post it. And it will be indexed.
The hypocrisy comes in from the social elders who now judge these teens. They see a teen holding a can of beer, and deem them irresponsible. Yet, the vast majority of those judging did the exact same thing when they were a teen. Holding this next generation to a higher standard is hypocritical. How many of the great men and women in society did the same kinds of things? (According to statistics: most of them.) And what does it accomplish? Does it actually reduce the activitie(s), or just teach teens how to hide and lie?
I think it's time that society in general got a little more honest and realistic about what teens are up to. They drink, they have sex, they do all kinds of crazy things. I'm not saying that we give them free reign to do whatever they want without consequences. But I'm sick of holding them to unrealistic expectations, and teaching them habits that amount to "hide the truth" rather than "enjoy life in a balanced and responsible way."
Parent
Saving the morality of our higher institutions (Score:5, Funny)
Just because you can doesn't mean you should. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Just because you can doesn't mean you should. (Score:4, Insightful)
As my mother-in-law says, if you're alive you're in business. So don't be a dolt and publicly post stuff that could have a deleterious effect on your image.
Parent
Re:Just because you can doesn't mean you should. (Score:5, Funny)
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.
I would say that it betrays a serious lack of judgement.
Specifically, everyone knows that American beers that come in cans are shit. If the prospective student can't even discern that, how can you expect them to perform in rigorous courses?
Parent
Re:Just because you can doesn't mean you should. (Score:5, Insightful)
Point taken, but such a student may indeed be far less likely to contribute to that university's Nobel Prize count.
Are you sure? I bet if Richard Feynman had had a Facebook profile it would have been pretty scandalous.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Feynman was a pain in the ass to administrators and bureaucrats, I can certainly imagine petty bureaucrats passing up a student potential-Feynman in order to make their own lives easier. (Before Nobel-worthiness is proven, of course. Once you're a proven genius then you can be as eccentric as you want and people will make allowances. They couldn't kick Feynman out of Los Alamos for safe-cracking, but a non-famous student picking the lock on the Dean's office...?)
I wonder how much they even bother to check (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I wonder how much they even bother to check (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell, I have a surname I have to spell for people, and a quick Google leads to the conclusion that I have my own band, regularly do shows of my art, and hold degrees in Computer Science and Medicine. Suffice to say, most of that isn't accurate.
Sooner or later someone (university admissions, potentional employer, whatever) is going to get themselves badly sued over this, and frankly it serves them right for making snap judgments based on what amounts to unproven rumours.
Parent
Beer (Score:5, Funny)
... "Because," Saracino continues, "Beer is not the sort of thing people drink at college."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Beer is not the sort of thing people drink at college.
Says the college administrator while he pours himself a scotch from the bottle on the bookshelf...
Scariest here... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's always someone posting what you wrote, and I always laugh. Not because it couldn't happen, but because the chances of it happening to any given person is unlikely.
I don't disagree that universities shouldn't be using this information to make their decisions, but not for the reasons you've given.
Personal? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Very scary, because it isn't just your content! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation. [nerdkits.com]
Re:Very scary, because it isn't just your content! (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Pimp your profile (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Pimp your profile (Score:5, Insightful)
getting accepted someplace famous isn't important.
It gives you a significant edge in later life. Leaf through Who's Who and notice people's colleges.
Parent
for faculty jobs as well (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a recent post [cosmicvariance.com] 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.
No sympathy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the stuff you post has no bearing on your ability to be a good student, you do have grounds for complaint. Life shouldn't be limited to whatever is acceptable to admissions officers with an overinflated sense of their ability to judge other people's character. Perhaps you're happy fitting into other people's molds of what people should be, but many people are not. Their personal lives -- even when discussed in public -- should generally have no bearing on your ability to attend college and improve yourse
Re:inappropriate beer photos? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent