In its annual survey of college admissions officers, Kaplan Test Prep found 35 percent went to an applicant’s social media pages to find out more about them.
Credit: Maureen Downey
Credit: Maureen Downey
But Kaplan says students are doing a better job keeping their pages sanitized; only 16 percent of admissions officers reported finding offensive things, down from 30 percent last year and 35 percent two years ago.
I notice fewer kids posting photos of themselves with alcohol or drugs. Eight years ago, I routinely saw photos on Facebook of teens taking swigs from a Smirnoff bottle or smoking. I don’t think kids or adults fully understood the implications of social media postings then.
Today, teens and adults are both much savvier on privacy and the need to be circumspect online. (Although I still have friends who talk about their children posting disconcerting or revealing photos on Instagram.)
Here is the official release from Kaplan:
Over a third (35%) of college admissions officers have visited an applicant’s social media page to learn more about them, according to Kaplan Test Prep’s 2014 survey of college admissions officers.
This is the highest percentage since Kaplan first began tracking the issue in 2008, when just under one in ten admissions officers reported doing so. But even as this practice becomes more commonplace, college admissions officers are actually finding fewer things online that negatively impact applicants’ chances — just 16% reported doing so this year, down from 30% last year and 35% two years ago.
“As social media has evolved from early versions of MySpace and Facebook to a broad ecosystem of platforms and apps that are a daily part of millions of people’s lives worldwide, we’re seeing greater acceptance of social media use in the college admissions process. This means admissions officers are increasingly open to what they once viewed as a dubious practice, while teens have come to terms with the fact that their digital trails are for the most part easily searchable, followable and sometimes judged,” said Christine Brown, executive director of K12 and college prep programs for Kaplan Test Prep.
A separate Kaplan survey of over 500 high school students shows that 58% describe their social networking pages as “fair game” for admissions officers.
In fact, 35% of students said that if a college admissions officer were to visit their social networking page(s), what they found would actually help their chances of getting in. Only 3% said it would hurt their chances; 62% said it would make no difference.
And even as schools have adopted social media for recruiting purposes, some savvy teens see it as another channel for promoting themselves. Kaplan’s survey also finds that while most students are indifferent to the role of social media in the admissions process, at least 18% plan to use online channels to help improve their college admissions chances.
“There’s no doubt social media has become increasingly a part of the admissions process, but students should recognize that it still plays only a peripheral role. The majority of admissions officers are not looking at Facebook for applicant information, and even those who are typically do so as an anomaly — because they were flagged, either positively or negatively, to particular applicants,” said Brown.
“Admissions chances are still overwhelmingly decided by the traditional factors of high school GPA, standardized test scores, letters of recommendation, personal essays and extracurricular activities. Applicants’ online personas are really a wild card in the admissions process: the bottom line for students is that what you post online likely won’t get you into college, but it just might keep you out.”
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