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.

Re:Very scary, because it isn't just your content!

[Ma8thew]

You are alerted when you are tagged. You can remove your tag from other people's photos, and they will not be able to add it again.

Re:The public internet is not private or personal

[n dot l]

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.