"Friending" College Admission Officers on Facebook

[AdmissionsDaniel]

<p>[Colleges</a> learn to live with social media – baltimoresun.com](<a href=“http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-md.socialmedia30sep30,0,7058660.story]Colleges”>http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-md.socialmedia30sep30,0,7058660.story)</p>

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Facebook and other social media sites have invaded college admissions in a big way. But the great rush to use social media also raises questions about privacy and appropriate relations between administrators and students. Desperate applicants might attempt to improve their admissions chances by “friending” counselors. Conversely, counselors might use social media profiles to search for red flags on certain candidates or to assemble information for targeted recruiting pitches. In 2008, a company created false Facebook sites for many universities in hopes of grabbing personal information for marketing purposes.</p>

<p>Though counselors agree that such uses aren’t the norm, they don’t always agree on what is appropriate and what isn’t.</p>

<p>Admissions counselors see Facebook as a means to get information to prospective students but say it’s more powerful than a virtual brochure. By attracting applicants and admitted students to fan pages, colleges hope to give them an early push toward building communities. The logic is that if students make friends with fellow prospective students and get a sense of life on campus, they’re more likely to enroll when the time comes.</p>

<p>For a college trying to improve its image and woo top students from more established competitors, one-to-one contact over Facebook might be a smart risk. For a selective and long-established university such as Johns Hopkins, those contacts are more trouble than they’re worth.</p>

<p>Creasy said he receives personal friend requests from applicants but does not accept and instead nudges them to join the university’s fan page for prospective students. “My role is not to create a relationship at that stage,” he said. “There are definitely students trying to game the system, but I think it’s a small minority. Most of them are doing it as a way to get as much information as possible.”

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[laurenmr]

<p>Having worked in admissions, I definitely feel strange about friending (unless it’s the person’s professionally-focused Facebook page they invite you to friend them from the university’s admissions website).</p>

<p>Lauren</p>

[MikeWozowski]

<p>i think it would do more harm than good if admission counselors actually looked at applicants facebook pages. most kids don’t put stiff on their facebooks that is anything to brag about!</p>

<p>they have nice things like foul language, photos of underage drinking, & many other types of inappropriate photos.</p>

<p>i would thing adcoms might friend stidents, but i would be surprised that many students friended adcoms. maybe the ones who do are the kinds of kids with nothing harmful on their pages (like my DD).</p>

[N8Ma]

<p>Facebook itself has the method for dealing with these issues. </p>

<p>You can simply create a “Page” for your school (or company, or band, a politician, a celebrity, or anything that you want to represent), and then people can become “Fans” of your Page. Fans and Pages interact differently than Friends–your personal and demographic information is not directly disclosed when you Fan a Page, which makes it different than giving/accepting a Friend request. </p>

<p>The people controlling the Page need to already have an existing Facebook account as themselves, but then all the actions they do on the Page (posting to the wall, creating events, uploading pictures, etc.) come from the Page itself, and do not reflect on the individual account. </p>

<p>This seems to me the reasonable way forward, as it allows a community to develop around a particular school in the Facebook world, without everyone knowing everyone else’s personal information. </p>

<p>And schools take notice–kids don’t like spam! The talented ones are going to get, what, hundreds of emails and direct mail pieces. Short and sweet, and leave out the threats, passive aggressive emails, or wounded tones when a high potential student says “sorry my search is taking me elsewhere.”</p>

[glassesarechic]

<p>This is just creepy. Most of my friends have added their middle name on Facebook (or something similar) to prevent adcoms from finding their pages. Not because they have pictures of them drinking (or that they even drink to begin with) or that there’s anything questionable on their page, but because it’s creepy to have random people looking at your Facebook page and assessing you.</p>

[iao0918]

<p>Why would I want to “friend” people I only want to show my very best to? Dumb…</p>