Check your News Feed – a small percentage of university admissions officers reported visiting applicants’ profiles on social networking Web sites, according to a Kaplan survey released last Thursday.
The survey found that 1 in 10 undergraduate admissions officers made use of networking sites to evaluate candidates. Of the officers who viewed online profiles, almost 40 percent found that information on these sites usually hurts an applicant’s chance for admission.
Northwestern has no official policy on the use of Facebook or similar sites and does not intend to implement one, said Dean of Undergraduate Admission Christopher Watson. Other NU graduate schools said they did not check social networking sites either.
“If you are an admissions officer, and you’re looking at Facebook or MySpace, and the student doesn’t know that, it seems very unfair to the candidate,” Watson said. “If you look at our application, we tell you what we’re going to look at and what we’re going to evaluate. To throw a curve ball like that seems unfair.”
Kaplan surveyed 320 admissions officers from the top 500 colleges and universities across the country. There were no discernible trends found in the data, said Kaplan spokesman Russell Schaffer.
“This is something that really cuts across geographical lines and population lines, whether it’s Ivy League or very competitive or less competitive,” he said.
Although more officers said they had negative impressions of candidates after seeing their profiles, about a quarter of officers reported their use of social networking sites generally improved their evaluation of students. Still, the risk is far greater than the reward, Schaffer said.
“The reality is having a great Facebook page isn’t going to cause an applicant to be accepted, but having something negative on a Facebook page can cause an applicant to be rejected,” he said.
Kaplan’s similar survey of graduate schools found that admissions officers at 15 percent of law schools, 14 percent of medical schools and 9 percent of business schools reported viewing social networking pages during evaluations.
Only 10 percent of schools surveyed have a policy on considering candidates’ social networking sites, and most of these policies ban admissions officers from using these sites altogether, Schaffer said. Almost all of the surveyed schools without policies said that they have no plans to create one.
The Feinberg School of Medicine admissions office also does not have a rule regarding use of social networking sites as part of a candidate’s evaluation, but its admissions officers do not view candidates’ online profiles, said a Feinberg representative. The School of Law declined to comment on whether it has any policy on the matter.
Schaffer said that NU’s undergraduate admissions office, Feinberg and the School of Law participated in the survey and that Kellogg did not, although the Feinberg admissions office denied the school took part in the study.
Weinberg junior David Hollander uses Facebook and enables some of the site’s privacy features. Though online profiles may affect students in the admissions process, there is little difference between an admissions office and a potential employer, he said.
“It kind of seems if it’s out there, and they can access it easily without breaking any rules, it would almost make sense from their perspective to just take advantage of every extra tool they can get,” he said.
