Facebook ventures into college admissions (with a new application)

Parents Forum
1

<p>so much for worrying about what the kids post on their profiles being discovered, on to the next subject....Facebook is becoming ubiquitous.....these folks seem to know their target consumers.</p>

<p>full article:
<a href="http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/22106%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/22106&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Excerpts</p>

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A new Facebook application named College Planner — introduced last week by the educational services company Embark — aims to relieve some of that stress and streamline the admissions process for students applying to undergraduate and graduate institutions by offering a network of fellow applicants, a research database of over 5,000 school profiles and online applications for some of the universities, Embark President Adam Park said in an interview.

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Park said the site brings the resources of Embark.com, the second most popular educational Web site after the College Board, to Facebook’s 49 million users. The University has an online profile created by Embark officials, but students cannot use College Planner to apply to Yale College. </p>

<p>It is now possible to apply online directly to 39 undergraduate institutions — including New York University, the University of Michigan and Emory University — through Embark’s Facebook application. The roughly 2,000 College Planner users can also access auto-filled PDF versions of applications to 229 colleges, including those at Princeton and Columbia universities.

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Many Facebook users interviewed said the Embark College Planner is among the most useful of Facebook’s 5,000 applications, which range from mechanisms for virtual food fights to Hogwarts house-sorting. </p>

<p>Through the College Planner, Facebook users can access school profiles and search for schools based on specific criteria such as school size and location. Students can also view the schools their friends are applying to and the schools students with similar interests are considering. </p>

<p>The application also features its own wall, giving students the opportunity to advise and communicate with one another about the college process. </p>

<p>Park said these social aspects of College Planner provide students with a sense of community at one of life’s most stressful moments.

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