<p>This is from a story in today's New York Times: "They Loved Your G.P.A. Then They Saw Your Tweets"</p>
<p>Anyone (adults included) who leaves any of their social media accounts open to the public is simply an idiot.</p>
<p>One of the points the article made, though, is that a social media account can be a problem even if it isn’t open to the public. The article mentioned one applicant to College X who “friended" an undergrad there during the application process. And when the applicant posted something disparaging about one of his high school teachers on his Facebook account, the undergrad reported it to the College X admissions office. The applicant was denied admission.</p>
<p>So it’s a “heads up” worth heeding: keeping an account private may not be enough to protect you if there are things on that account you wouldn’t want repeated.</p>
<p>Ha, ha, I thought this threat was a warning for the Adcoms themselves. One of them got into trouble for indiscretion last year because of social medial activity.</p>
<p>My D2 is a freshman at U Miami and she told me a funny story about orientation. There were 2000 freshman all in a huge auditorium and one of the deans put up some tweets and facebook entries on the screen from unsuspecting freshmen in the room. One said “watch out Miami **<strong><em>es here I am” one said “I’m *</em></strong>ting, I’m ****ting I’m so excited to be at the U”. This dean was funny and said “I hope she brought toilet paper”. Anyway my D said that it was hysterical but pretty embarrassing for the students who were picked on. I guess the point was to be careful what you post.</p>
<p>As a practical matter, students should probably create a new email account to use or college applications: <a href="mailto:firstname.lastname@whateverdomain.com">firstname.lastname@whateverdomain.com</a>. Do not link it to Facebook twitter, or any of the rest.</p>
<p>This is something that most of the students at my daughter’s high school are acutely aware of already. They tried to expel a girl for something she said on her twitter feed - off campus during non-school hours. Thus, all of the students are now a bit paranoid about social media posts, etc.</p>
<p>With so many applicants to so many colleges I am dumbfounded that adcoms have time to google applicants. Scary.</p>
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<p>…me, too!!</p>
<p>You think a superintendent making $250K a year might also know better … </p>
<p>[APS</a> superintendent suspended for 3 days over tweets | Albuquerque News - KOAT Home](<a href=“http://www.koat.com/news/new-mexico/albuquerque/aps-board-to-hold-friday-briefing-on-winston-brooks-tweets/-/9153728/22872092/-/4obscu/-/index.html]APS”>Brooks suspended 3 days over controversial tweets)</p>
<p>ha ha ha!!! They will never find me!!!</p>
<p>Ditto for those looking for jobs too!! Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want your grandmother to see (even if she is a salty, wise-cracKing old bird!)</p>
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<p>The article says most adcoms they asked said they don’t, in fact, have time to google prospective applicants.</p>
<p>Still, for college or a job or heck just life in general, it’s best not to display illegal-tasteless-negative actions anywhere. Or so I told my kids.</p>
<p>I read an article a few months ago that suggested that simply deleting bad stuff misses an opportunity. One could build a positive and impressive FB/twitter/instagram/whatever profile showcasing accomplishments, photos of the student doing things talked about in the app, etc. While I’m not sure that’s worth a lot of effort, it’s an interesting idea if googling applicants becomes widespread.</p>
<p>There’s nothing new here, just more ways that people can leave an online footprint. The admissions reps are often young, tech savvy people themselves. Applications don’t go into a black hole. There are real people at the other end. Some google, others don’t. I suspect some do who won’t admit publicly that they do. No one wants to scare away potential applicants.</p>
<p>The kids in my son’s high school apparently know this because senior year all of the kids change their names on Facebook - it’s usually a funny derivative and to me, very amusing.</p>
<p>I was on a search committee at work. We telephone interviewed a candidate who listed in her resume her information re: Twitter, etc. When I checked out her Twitter feed, I was appalled at some of her tweets and was amazed that she gave out that information on her resume. Yikes!</p>