<p>Does anyone know whether applicants get "googled" before interviws and/or during the admissions process, and, if so, what they might be looking for?</p>
<p>They goggle some of them, but I'm not sure if they Google them.</p>
<p>haha i lol'd at the title. Just curious about why you even asked?</p>
<p>My daughter's interviewer for an LAC she ended not applying to Googled her (found her MySpace), and she him (found an article in the college paper that mentioned his getting kicked off the soccer team for drinking). I think she found out more interesting things about him than he did about her. Whether anyone finds out anything at all may depend on how unusual a name someone has.</p>
<p>I've heard that sometimes they do, and I wonder what they might pick up on kids. My son has never done anything negative that would show up, but I wonder if they look for family connections or whatever.</p>
<p>I would hope they don't since there can be too much confusion with the names and too much of a chance of a mistake being made; unless, of course, the applicant is using myspace and has laid their soul to bear on it. The information on the internet can't be deemed reliable or accurate. </p>
<p>I don't understand why kids want to expose all kinds of personal details on myspace - I'm not sure they think about the masses that can access this info and how some of it may come back to haunt them.</p>
<p>I've Googled people before interviewing them as an alum interviewer, and I also interviewed someone once whom I had initially "met" on CC, though to my knowledge the student never realized that he had met me here. It was a total coincidence that I was assigned that student to interview.</p>
<p>All of these are darned good reasons for students to be truthful in their applications and to have good sense about what they post on message boards and blogs. </p>
<p>I also have read that lots of employers Google applicants as well as employees, and some people have lost jobs because of things they've written on blogs.</p>
<p>I agree about the need to exercise caution. In my daughter's case, there was nothing remotely unseemly in anything she posted, and in fact a number of the photos and comments on her MySpace probably even confirmed how involved she was with certain activities that she had mentioned in her application. </p>
<p>Other things that turn up when one Googles someone are things like lists of winners of a math competition (not hard at all to see who qualified for AIME)or who made all-conference on an athletic team and things like that. Further reason not to stretch the truth.</p>
<p>RE: My Space...during our parent orientation at NEU they showed us a clip from Dateline where a potential employer checked out a student's my space. Needless to say it wasn't pretty. The message out there was that anything on your my space could be viewed by an employer or grad school or whatever. So...anything related to drinking, promiscuity, etc. might not be a good idea....lol. Regarding the blogs, I know of a case where employees posted a lot of negative personal remarks about supervisors, etc. and ended up in a lot of trouble at work because of it...yeah, so don't stretch the truth and no naked pics please...</p>
<p>I know a person who lost her job because of her Myspace blog, which basically demonstrated to her employer that her mediocre performance at work was no accident: On the blog, she said she hated her job. </p>
<p>To my knowledge, the former employee never figured out why she was laid off because her supervisor never bothered to mention seeing the blog.</p>
<p>haha I love these stories. All the more reasons why I won't join Myspace until it actually has a point.</p>
<p>As an alumni interviewer I have also Googled applicants before interviewing them. This is probably more likely with alumni interviewers, who may interview 6 or 8 applicants a year, than with on-campus interviewers, who might interview 6 or 8 applicants every couple of days.</p>
<p>What I'm mainly looking for is awards, activities, and sports performances. I've never looked in mySpace (I would know how).</p>
<p>Googling someone doesn't mean you are reading about the person you think you are. </p>
<p>If you were to google my name right now you would see that I was a golfer, and quite a golfer at that! Of course, I have never golfed in my life. You would also see numerous records for people that even share my middle name and participated in activities that I had no part in.</p>
<p>One of my new co-workers was convinced I was a golfer because he had "googled" me before I started work.</p>
<p>I don't even have a very common last name!</p>
<p>Googling someone does not equal acurate research in every case.</p>
<p>We have a rather common last name. All the members of my family have at least a dozen other on line lives, apparently, some interesting, some distressingly seedy. I would hope no one would assume they really belonged to us, but I am afraid someone might.</p>
<p>If I have an applicant Jane Doe from Thomas Jefferson High School in Springfield who says she's on the swim team, I look for all those things. It's really not that hard to be specific about a person if you pay some attention to what you are doing.</p>
<p>It's easy to match up people via Google. Even with common last names, one can see who's who by checking locations, including cities and high schools (which many students put in their Myspace pages) and activities. Typically, students who apply to places like HPYS have done something notable that results in their getting newspaper coverage or being listed on school or organization web pages as officers, team members or award winners. Sometimes their pictures are posted, too. </p>
<p>As for alum interviewers, we get info about their high school, too, so very often such students are listed on their high schools' web sites as was the case with one applicant who was listed on the front page of his h.s. web site because of perfect scores.</p>
<p>Since I live in a small city, and many people applying to my college come from immigrant families with uncommon names, it's easy for me to match people up through Google.</p>
<p>Incidentally, savvy students can do the same with admissions officers, alum interviewers, professors, etc. Frankly, I'm surprised that students don't routinely do this with their alumni interviewers.</p>
<p>I took a college French class for fun a couple of years ago and learned that one of my teachers had been a major radical during her graduate program, getting national attention for a cause that I fully supported. I couldn't understand why another had no Internet listing at all despite having a very unusual last name. There literally were no hits at all on her last name. Ended up that she was working on her doctorate and came from a family that was illiterate and impoverished.</p>
<p>I just tried googling my son's name. He's either a professor emeritus of physics or a 28 year old partier in California.</p>
<p>I wrote a</a> blog entry about this back in April and another</a> one in June.</p>
<p>I've worked at large and small schools. Regardless of the number of applications we receive, during application season, we don't have too much time to be searching out students on the web. However, once in a while, something will peak our interest and we'll check up on it. </p>
<p>Prepping for interviews at another [engineering] school, I routinely googled students. That school required that students email a resume or list of interests ahead of time and if something specific was mentioned, I'd check it out. </p>
<p>I especially did this for students involved in FIRST robotics (videos of many competitions are online). FIRST is an activity that I find really interesting and the students seemed to like the fact that I had seen their team in action.</p>
<p>I guess that's a yes and a no answer. Hope it helps a little bit.</p>
<p>My specific concern arose after reading in a book on college admissions that if an admissions person knows a student's parents are well-known or wealthy, they might mentally lop off 100 SAT points, assuming privilege and expensive SAT prep courses, etc.</p>
<p>My husband is a well-known, fairly recognizable business person and if my son's name is googled, the first thing that pops up is a Wikipedia entry about his Dad. We never expected to use this in his favor, but it was dismaying to think it could count against him.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there's really nothing to be done about it, I guess.</p>
<p>Dean J: it's not "peak your interest," it's "pique your interest"--unless you mean that an applicant heightens your interest.... </p>
<p>Just call me the spelling police for today.</p>