<p>You can't find me, I don't think. I never use my real name. Never use my personal email(s) for college applications.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
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.
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Of course, I can't speak for everyone in my professional, but I would never do such a thing. </p>
<p>Now I'm curious...who wrote the book? At what schools did they work?
[QUOTE]
Dean J: it's not "peak your interest," it's "pique your interest"--unless you mean that an applicant heightens your interest....
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I usually write in Word and paste my posts in. Guess I'm guilty of relying on the spell checker a little too much. Thanks for spotting that. :)</p>
<p>So Enn, you never use your real name for college applications, high school registration, etc.? Never used your real name if you've ever done anything that would get written up in the school or local newspaper? Didn't give your real name to College Board for National Merit consideration on the PSAT?</p>
<p>As Northstarmom said, applicants to HYPS and similar highly selective schools have usually done something noteworthy, often both academically and in extra curricular activity. If you do those things under an assumed name, colleges might very well look askance at your application if they can not verify any of your achievments.</p>
<p>dean j</p>
<p>I can't remember which book because I've read so many (blush--I'm a little obsessed), but it must have been one that otherwise sounded credible or it wouldn't have concerned me. I'll do a library run and let you know.</p>
<p>My favorite book so far has been "Winning the Heart of the College Admissions Dean", but I'm not sure if it was in that one.</p>
<p>Thank you for your input.</p>
<p>Of course I did. But it's nothing that can be found online. I'm an international student and my high school doesn't do the online paper thing. </p>
<p>The local paper I work for and that I've published articles in doesn't have the website up yet. And our local papers aren't big on internet articles, maybe in Arabic, but they're not interested in High School things. =]</p>
<p>I'm from Kuwait.</p>
<p>I've been googled and I've googled others, including my interviewers. it's kind of funny when they're surprised by a random tidbit you know about them, and i've been surprised about what people knew about me! Of course, I don't always reveal what I know, I don't want to seem stalkerish!</p>
<p>I think it's nice to take an extra effort to learn more about someone, and it definitely made my interviewers seem more human and less intimidating. Of course, keep in mind that you can't learn everything through google, or even a significant amount of information about someone. I was talking about a very controversial issue with one of my interviewers, and it came out in the end her husband was one of the attorneys on the other end of the lawsuit!! I got into the school though, thank goodness I was used to using politically correct terms, and she seemed mildly entertained.</p>
<p>I just googled an interviewer. That was a good idea. =D</p>
<p>She seems like a nice person.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Incidentally, savvy students
[/quote]
Knowing that adcom's routinely google applicants opens up a whole new world for dishonest students who could easily create entries that result in google 'hits' affirming their supposed attributes and achievements. Hopefully these googling adcoms learn to pay attention to only hits from viable sources and discard any from suspicious ones.</p>
<p>I just googled myself, pretty tight cuz my last name and my first name are very very very rare in the US and so I found out that I really did a community service, I Was on swim team and I was in Honor Roll, lol, cool :)</p>
<p>Alright- I admit my ignorance. Can you get into someone's "myspace" account without being "invited"? I thought you had to say you wanted to list them/be listed as a friend, and then be accepted (or something like that)/ An if not- hoe do they find out individual's "myspace" account names?</p>
<p>Yeah, lol. You can get a myspace without an invite. =]</p>
<p>Who do you want to look up first? Because if you're a parent, I'm not providing you with that information, sorry. But it's easy enough to find out.</p>
<p>I had registered for myspace a while ago- I just hadnt done much perusing. I typed in my s's name (yup- am a parent, and sorry, much to your chagrin I have figured out how to search and meander about the site...) - Anyway- there are several people with my s's same name! Hope if/when the time comes adcomms take the time to see if it is the right person, from the right city. It would be a bummer if they got people mixed up and made a decision after looking at the wrong person on myspace. I hope they would be carful to double check that....</p>
<p>Any time one posts on line or uses e-mail -- anywhere -- one should assume that what you write is available to anyone in the world.</p>
<p>Once when I was downloading my e-mails from the company where I worked, I got all of the e-mails of a person who was an executive in another department. </p>
<p>One summer, my husband, a college prof, once received in the mail copies of the personal e-mails that one of his students had written to the person whom she was roomming with during a summer internship. The two roommates were disagreeing about keeping their apartment clean, and the disagreement got very nasty with lots of personal attacks including about my husband's student's sex life. Even though all of this occurred in a different state from where my husband teaches, through a fluke, both of us happened to know the roommate, and the roommate decided to take some twisted revenge by sending the e-mails to my husband.</p>
<p>I also accidentally found my older S's blog, and learned that his life after dropping out of college was very different than what he was telling us. The blog contained pictures as well as a day to day account of virtually everything going on in his life. I was not searching for his blog. It even was under an assumed name. It totally was a fluke that I found it.</p>
<p>Anyway, when posting anywhere -- including on CC -- and when sending e-mails assume that your worst enemy, your employer or the admissions committee at your dream school -- is reading what you post, and consequently post accordingly. Even though some blog sites allege that one can restrict access, don't assume that is 100% true. Glitches happen, and there are always ways of getting around on-line restrictions.</p>
<p>My father said, many years ago, "don't put anything in writing unless you're prepared to see it on the front page of the local newspaper." These days, the internet is the local newspaper--except on steroids.</p>
<p>Wow, a little scary...</p>
<p>Dean J</p>
<p>I found the reference. It was in "Winning the Heart of the College Admissions Dean" by Joyce Slayton Mitchell, but I had remembered it slightly incorrectly. She advises not to write essays on "My summer in Africa" etc. because that smacks of privelege and deans of selective schools now "hate privelege".</p>
<p>Also that the dean of admissions at Amherst says he lops off 100 SAT point for any student who's gone to a NYC private school, assuming extensive test prep.</p>
<p>I think it scared me because I'd encouraged our son to talk about how travel had shaped his worldview. I still think this is ok in the context of "How this has shaped me as a person and learner".</p>
<p>And my son has only gone to public schools and that will be plain from his application, though someone could still guess he would have done expensive test prep (he didn't) because we could afford it.</p>