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Do Social Networking Sites Affect My College Admission?
Social networking is the norm. It’s entertaining, it’s fun, it’s addicting and it’s here to stay. Just about everyone has a profile on one, or more, social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook. We all love posting crazy fun pictures and trading wall posts about what happened last night to so and so. Our profile pages are an extension of our personal lives.
Your profile and college admissions
Take a close look at your social networking profile before you consider applying for college. There’s a chance the admissions staffer may take a peek at your profile and see just who you really are. So if you’ve got an image you’re trying to project on your application but your profile page shows someone different, you may want to do some profile page clean up before sending in your admission application package.
Clean up your profile
Social networking sites have security measures that provide a level of privacy to your profile page. Discourage those that you don’t know personally from seeing everything you’ve put up on your wall. Think twice before friending someone and allowing them access to your profile page. One way of protecting your identity and access to your personal information is to allow different levels of access to your profile page. You can do this on your social networking site’s privacy pages by creating groups. Giving different groups varying degrees of information and permission will give you the freedom to post your pics and questionable wall posts knowing that only certain people are allowed to see them.
Beyond your profile, who are you online?
Going beyond the social networking sites, you have to consider your online persona. Did you sign up for a fantasy league using some crazy team name, which unfortunately links to your real name? Do you blog or make comments on blogs? Google yourself and see what turns up. Unfortunately, the internet never forgets. You could have signed up for that fantasy football league in junior high under some ridiculous name you’d rather forget, and you Google yourself and it might show up to haunt you.
People forget the very public nature of the Internet. What’s on the search results and on your profile is there for everyone to see. You never know who’s reading about you or seeing your profile and what information they are getting about you. The ramifications of your online persona is endless as your friends will see it, strangers will see it, your (present and future) bosses and co-workers will see it and certainly, potential college admissions staffers can see what you’ve posted.
Be careful and consider this question before you post anything “Would my mom approve of this?” If you don’t want mom or your Number 1 school to see it, then don’t post it.
