10 Percent of Colleges Check Applicants' Social Profiles 398
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.
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)
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Insightful)
take responsibility for your own actions?
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Funny)
Punch him in the face?
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?
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.
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.
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Its like a job interview - if you don't care about your own application enough to clean up your public image (and Facebook is public), then why should I take you seriously?
If your Facebook page makes you look like an idiot, then yes, I do question how seriously you intend to study here at ExampleU. A competitive college gets many more applicants than they can possibly accept, public information is a pretty good way to weed out the pile and discover who's likely a good student and who
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
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.
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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
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One quibble:
The beauty of legalization is that you can have a beer with your parents. A better comparison, however, would be the percentage of 16-year-olds who've gone drinking in private without any adults present. The atmosphere is entirely different, and good judgement is entirely absent. This is the atmosphere that leads to keg stands and binge drinking, drunk driving and death by alcohol poisoning. It's already something of a scourge on camp
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Funny)
Ahhh......the good old days!!
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And in some cases, drunk cycling!
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.
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I know more 50 year olds who drive drunk than 17 year olds.
I used to work at a restaurant which was a little out of the way and even though there was always a fleet of taxis there at the end of the night it was common enough as I went home to see the car in front meandering around the road with an obviously drunk driver. I'd pass them later and it was almost always some white haired old codger.
You see old people can be idiots too but the difference is that they're certain they can handle it because they've
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 ?
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.
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Well, it means not drinking at age 17 in a country where the drinking age is 21. I'm sure there's other better examples of stupid pictures recruiters would dislike on the internet, but that particular example is both common and indefensible. If you're already partying and binge drinking in high school, I can't imagine yourself making a dramatic voluntary change in college.
There is a difference between underage drinking and binge drinking. And what's wrong with partying?
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.
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It's not so much about privacy as it is about freedom.
What you do in your private time is your business, not that of the admissions staff, your employer or anyone you don't explicitly include in that private life. My boss/coworkers know full well I'm a (part-time) party hound, but when I'm on the clock I'm delivering 100%. If either one of them were to criticize me over my facebook-documented weekend boozecapades, I'd give them an earful! Conversely, I'd drag my boss out to the peelers and drink him unde
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I don't think you really understood the meaning of responsibility there. If you don't want to be held accountable for doing something, then don't do it. That doesn't somehow translate to doing it in 'private' with the assumption that private means that nobody knows about it.
Does the same logic apply to things like being gay? "Hey, if you don't want to face the college-admissions consequences, you shouldn't have done it!"
The problem is whether a beer is legitimately objectionable or not.
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.
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.)
Re:The public internet is not private or personal (Score:5, Insightful)
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OMG, somebody drinking a beer! When I was 17 I did a lot of stupid/illegal stuff but I turned out to be a productive member of society.
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Legality does not define morality. Rules should flow the other way. A 17-year old drinking beer is not immoral, and therefore should not be illegal.
As Thoreau said, we have not only a right, but a duty to disobey unjust laws.
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Yes and no. They are disregarding formal enforcement, but most are either bowing into peer pressure ("it's cool to drink") or do so because they physically enjoy the feeling of being inebriated. Neither of these expressed a particularly developed personality. To borrow a page from Dabrowski, they are both still "primal" behaviors (first factor of physical wants, second factor of social norms). You're breaking a social norm of a certain peer group in exchange for obeying the social norm of a different group.
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Hypocrisy is how the most obnoxious nation in the world has demonized the oldest forms of entertainment, and is now whining because those demons are out of control.
Killing is fine if it's in the name of "god", fraud is fine if you call it "banking", but nudity will not be tolerated in any form, unless you cover your nipples.
What the fuck kind of warped mind came up with that ? The mindset is most definitely not in line with the majority of Americans I've known.
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Won't get you very far in a society where what's important is image not responsibility, where nobody takes responsibility until the image comes out, and even if there's a reasonable explanation for the image then responsibility must be seen to be taken (a different thing) because the image is more important than the actual facts.
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Well, yes and no. Yes, in the fact that sites like myspace and what you post for everyone to see isn't private. It's still personal, but that's just semantics.
In the same token, there are things we can and do privately on the internet, but I doubt you were really targeting that with your post. So this is a bit moot.
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.
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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
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.
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?
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.
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Wow. You have a pretty rosy idea about what university is like.
I went (not in the US). It wasn't anything like that. I mean, don't get me wrong, I had some fun with my friends there, but it there was no uplifting atmosphere of intellectual curiousity. And I'm afraid nobody had time to "explore new ideas" with me, we were all busting our asses to jump through enough arbitrary hoops to get our degrees. The ones who weren't that busy were doing arts degrees and spent all their spare time socialising or doing c
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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!
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I would question whether a college has any business judging people to such an extent on somethng as trivial as a can of beer.
OTOH, this is the good 'ol US of A we're talking about. Weirdos.
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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)
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.
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."
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Precisely. I wish I hadn't already posted -- a mod up of your post would have done more good.
If someone posted a picture of himself having sex on the Internet, that may reflect on his judgment. If someone posted a picture of himself and his buddies at a party with beers, that just means he's like every other human, teenage or otherwise, on the planet.
Hypersensitive moralists of any stripe need to get over themselves.
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May I ask what your line of reasoning is? Seeing that someone has an active social life, which is about all you can infer from that, would make the applicant more appealing to me. What is such a photo incriminating of?
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Almost all kids do things that others would frown on. Just because you find nothing about someone online doesn't mean they don't do it -- only that there is no indication of them doing it online.
It leads to the fallacious reasoning "Oh, student xxxx doesn't have any online profiles of him drinking and having sex, and student yyyyy does. That must mean student xxxxx doesn't do those things and student yyyyy does. Therefore, student xxxxx is a better choice."
It sounds like that's the argument, and, even if
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that's what parents are for
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I've seen teenagers with loads of common sense (myself included), and I've seen adults with none. It has nothing to do with age and everything to do with experience and upbringing.
Breaking news! (Score:2, Funny)
Saving the morality of our higher institutions (Score:5, Funny)
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In other news: If I apply for a position and get a reply for a prospective boss or coworker, I check to see what kind of person it is. Before applying I look on the companies website to see if they have pages with current employees. These are put there for a reason. Working is all about having a good fit between you and your colleagues. If you are a more conservative tie-and-suit person, and you find that your prospective boss is a pot-smoking hippie acco
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And, since no one under 21 except you ever drinks, the fact that you broke that law is obviously a reflection on your character and your academic potential.
EPIC CLUE FAIL.
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.
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Point taken, but such a student may indeed be far less likely to contribute to that university's Nobel Prize count. However, of course, that doesn't seem to have an effect on the count of US Presidents that come from a student body, although I'm thinking that Yale might be a little ashamed of #43.
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.
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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...?)
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.
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.
The problem isn't that you are holding a single can of beer.
The problem is that you are totally sloshed and barely able to stand.
The problem is that you are an exhibitionist drunk - lewd and obnoxious. The problem is that this isn't your first such performance on YouTube.
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'It's typically inappropriate photos -- 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.
It makes me glad I'm not in the USA for college. The university I attended in London had several bars on campus (some run by the students, some run by the university). The first thing on my timetable was something like "Computing department new students party" where the head of department told us if we drank all the wine they'd provided she'd see to it that there was more next time.
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?
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You need to chill out.
What's a functional alcoholic by your definition anyway? I've heard people called that because they goth through a six pack in a week...
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.
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Sadly, when college admissions are as hypercompetitive as they are now, it will be very easy for the university to defend against that lawsuit by claiming myriad other small reasons the candidate was not accepted.
The real loss for the universities is that admissions decisions are being made based on irrelevant bullshit (if "holding a beer" and not "making a total drunken idiot of yourself" is really the criterion), not the wealth of actual useful information the candidates provide.
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Don't forget to mention how easy it is to photo-shop a picture. Stick a person's face on a something inappropriate and you have that 'bad shot'.
For those people who say, it is easy to distinguish a photo-shop picture, remember we are talking about some administrative worker who is focused upon paperwork. They may examine the picture all of 5 seconds. It is not going to be examined closely like a fake ID to get beer or a Passport to get in and out the country.
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I doubt they look twice.
Just like employers that do the same sort of 'background checks', they don't bother and just move on to the next while you never knew what happened.
Even if its your face, who is to say it wasn't grafted on?
Beer (Score:5, Funny)
... "Because," Saracino continues, "Beer is not the sort of thing people drink at college."
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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...
Because They Wouldn't Dare Do That At College... (Score:2)
Honestly. It's no news that high school kids drink, do drugs, and fuck each others brains out. So what? You expect them to not do that when they need to wind down?
I think a reality check is in order. I can understand checking for a long history of a criminal background and seeing that they've done nothing to curb it, sure. They're probably a liability; but some kid who parties with his friends? No more or less a liability than the next person, given the odds.
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.
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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.
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Responsibility and Judgment should be rewarded.
You can be responsible and have good judgement and still hold a can of beer at a party.
Facebook and MySpace "personal space"? (Score:2)
That's news to me. Even though I am not in any of the social networking sites (can you believe it?), I was always under the impression that the profiles you create there are, you know, publicly accessible.
If you don't want information about you to be viewed, it could be a good idea not to publish it online.
No expectation of privacy in a public space (Score:2, Insightful)
..including the internet.
Arguably the universities should restrict themselves to the application documents and interviews, in the spirit of fair play.
However, these kids have created publicly viewable profiles for themselves and chosen to leave the privacy settings off so anyone with a net connection can view them. They've then loaded up these profiles with photos and information that make them look bad, and still decided to leave it all open to public view.
There's no way someone who's done all this could p
I'd turn the college down (Score:2)
Any college using this sort of highly dubious character assessment technique would not be a place I would want to study or work.
Its stupid anyway, hell, If I'd been judged by the things I got up to outside the classroom I'd never have made it past my first year at uni.
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)
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This is what people should be worried about. Social networking sites have privacy settings that essentially allow you to restrict access to your profile to a whitelist of other users. This makes it trivial to ensure that information you publish about yourself is not publicly available.
However, the problem is that other users can "tag" you (indicate if you are in a certain photo and where your face is) in their own photos. This means that you can't control whether these photos are p
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.
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I doubt it's necessary. There's hundreds of great colleges all across America; anyone can get accepted to a decent school somewhere here. It might not be Harvard, but that doesn't matter. I went to a fairly unknown university, learned many things, expanded my thinking, gained new perspectives, and did all of the things anyone should do in college.
I remember from high school that many people are worried about getting in at all or about going to someplace famous. Getting accepted someplace that's decent isn't
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.
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This already exists. I'm blanking on the name of the company right now, but there is one out there that will do one of two things:
1. Find crap about you on the internet and clean up your image a bit.
OR
2. Put some stuff out on the internet about you to make you look better than you really are.
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Little more than rumors. (Score:2)
The danger here is that these social networking sights have no inherent credibility at all. How does anyone know a facebook page is the student they searched for? It could be a fake page put up by some douche-bag, it could be someone else entirely, or it could be simply an inside joke that the school miss-interpreted.
I don't buy the argument that going into Facebook or Myspace is some kind of "invasion of privacy". That idea is artificial and created by an insular view of these spaces because parents are
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.
inappropriate beer photos? (Score:2)
Holding a beer at a party is inappropriate? Better cancel several hundred beer commercials then.
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.
They do this for job applicants as well (Score:2, Interesting)
No sympathy. (Score:4, Insightful)
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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
Duh, and duh-er. (Score:2, Insightful)
A can of beer? Surely you're joking, Mr. Kaplan! (Score:2)
Surely you're joking, would they have turned away someone like Richard Feynman? [myspace.com] for things like this:
A question... (Score:2)
However, I don't understand how people can search Facebook. I don't have a Facebook account as it seems useless unless you are part of an organization that uses it widely. The whole point of it is that it seems to be closed (and thus is useless for promoting your work).
Thu
A new social norm is being created (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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