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10 Percent of Colleges Check Applicants' Social Profiles
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Sep 21, 2008 11:58 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, 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)
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: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
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: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: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
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: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
Beer (Score:5, Funny)
... "Because," Saracino continues, "Beer is not the sort of thing people drink at college."
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.
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.
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.
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