Hello guys, I need your help! I’m taking the ACT on April 18th and I wrote this essay yesterday. Would you rate it please?
Here is the prompt: “Some colleges and universities, as part of the application process, have reviewed applicants’ pages on social networking sites such as MySpace and FaceBook. Many support this idea, arguing that schools can distinguish between true and false claims of extracurriculars listed on applications. Others disagree, arguing such use of social networking sites is unfair. In your opinion, should admissions’ offices use the content of applicants’ MySpace and Facebook pages in weighing their applications?”
The question being asked is whether colleges and universities should review applicants’ profiles on social networking sites in order to make sure that students have listed real and true extracurricular activities in their resumés. Although someone might argue that this attitude saying that this could be regarded as a lack of privacy and might lead to misunderstandings, in my view, admissions’ offices ought to see perspective students’ pages on social networking sites so that they can know him or her from all the facets. Thus, I think that this has to be done mainly because of three reasons: the admissions’ reviewers may find out things about the applicants who tried to hide them; they can observe their perspective students from a tangible point of view; they can figure out how the applicant interacts with his or her peers.
First of all, especially in the city where I live, that is a small city located in Southern Italy,there is a lot of criminality. This is commonplace in many U.S. cities as well and colleges should make their best effort in an attempt to avoid violent students applying to U.S. colleges because it may bring violence and micro-criminality on their campuses. In fact, unless they have been arrested and/or signaled to local authorities, it is pretty much impossible to understand the possible violent attitude of the applicant. Nonetheless, this can be detected from his or her FaceBook or MySpace profile where it can be perfectly seen one’s friends and what sort of pages one likes. Consequently, checking applicants’ profiles may be a good way to avoid dangerous and aggressive events on U.S. campuses.
Additionally, from social networking sites admissions’ officers might get an impartial idea of what the applicants really look like and what types of things they enjoy doing in their free times. For instance, if a special event occurs, people like to post pictures of their experiences on their pages in order to share them with FaceBook or MySpace users. Hence, this can be helpful for reviewers to realize how meaningful an event has been for that person and what his or her reaction was, highlighting the applicants’ behavior to it in a direct and objective way.
Lastly, FaceBook and other networking sites allow people to “become friends” with others. Likewise, if one becomes friend with more than hundreds of people, this implies that he or she is sociable and extroverted, interacts and gets on well with his or her peers. For this reason, it should be clear that admissions’ officers have to review applicants’ pages on networking sites so that they can make sure what the applicants can bring to the community table.
To sum it up, I think that admissions reviewers should definitely have a look at their applicants pages. It cannot be said that this may be a lack of privacy as FaceBook or MySpace profiles are public and everyone can have access to them. Therefore, this praxis will not go agains the law, and colleges and universities will eventually benefit form it.
It is 3½-page long! I have read that length matters! 
Let me know how many points this essay would receive. Have a good day guys!
