According to Natasha Singer from New York
Times, admissions officers still mention a high school senior for prospective
students who posted disparaging comments on Twitter about her fellow attendees
at the information session at Bowdoin College (Brunswick, ME) last year. She
didn't seem to realize that colleges keep track of their social media mentions.
Scott A. Meiklejohn, Bowdoin's dean of admissions and financial aid said,
"It was incredibly unusual and foolish of her to do that."
While certain high school seniors work on
their early applications to colleges, some may not realize what they comment
online could negatively affect their admission decisions. A research from
Kaplan Test Prep suggests online scrutiny of college hopefuls is
increasing.
Of course there are some concerns, such as those of Bradely S. Shear, a lawyer specializing in social media law,
that colleges might erroneously identify the account of a person with the same
name as a prospective student or "false and misleading content online is taken
as fact."
Some college officers who are interviewed for this
article said it was not routine practice at their institutions to google
applicant’s names or peruse their social media posts. Other admissions
officials said they did not formally prohibit the practice; they look at online
material about applicants on an ad hoc basis. There had been an incident in
which a newly admitted student at Colgate University was called by the dean of
admission to be checked if an alcohol-related incident that was reported online
was true.
Probably, deleting the stuff you don’t want colleges
to see would be “like joining two more clubs senior year to list on your
application to try to make you seem more like the person they want at their schools,”
as Megan Heck a senior at East Lansing High School in Michigan puts it.
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