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Social Media

Text messaging and posting on sites like Facebook and Twitter are every day activities for most of the students we work with. These are wonderful tools for keeping in touch with friends and staying involved with ones peers. The vast majority of these social interactions are harmless, but it is important for students to remember that everything they write on-line could potentially be read by a high school teacher or administrator, not to mention a college admissions officer!

Most high schools today spend some time educating their students about the potential dangers of texting (or sexting) and social media so that kids are usually aware of the risks. However, this does not mean that well-educated students don't make mistakes. They do, and sometimes these mistakes can be painfully harmful to others. Furthermore, there are reported cases each year of students who have written something or posted a photograph or video that is quite condemning. In some cases students have had their admissions to college rescinded. Even bright kids do not always exercise sound judgment when it comes to these issues, and it is important that parents reinforce responsible on-line behavior with their children.

Here are some general guidelines and cautionary tales -

Email

Use common sense when you create or specify an email address for your college communications. It doesn't reflect well on you to have an email address that refers to the edgy nickname your friends have for you or your favorite slasher movie. This is not the place to demonstrate your great sense of humor!

Many high school students have email addresses through their schools based on their name and the school server - that's generally a safe one to use.

Social Media

Do not post anything on the Internet - via Facebook, MySpace, blog or a webpage - that you wouldn't want your parents, your teachers or an admissions officer seeing. You may be convinced that your privacy settings are keeping everything hidden but we have definitely seen more than we wanted to about some of our students.

We ask admissions officers all the time whether or not they look for applicants on these sites. Until this year, the response we heard was always "we don't have the time to go looking but if something like underage drinking or bragging about cheating is brought to our attention, it's hard to ignore". And believe it or not, pictures and posts are sometimes forwarded to admissions offices by other students and parents. That's right - that is the primary way in which an admissions officer becomes aware of something on your Wall.

This year we heard something different. For the first time, we actually heard an admissions officer say that if a student refers to their Facebook page or blog, he'll look it up. And his reaction was great surprise at how some students were portraying themselves in what is essentially public space.

Finally, many colleges and universities are creating online communities, often for accepted students. We actually heard a story of a student commenting in one of those communities that he was so happy to have been admitted Early Decision 2 at this particular college that he was going to turn down the college that admitted him Early Decision 1!

So here's the news flash: the Internet is public space. Anything you post has the possibility of being shared with anyone else - you no longer control its distribution. So take steps to manage your online profile for a prime time audience.

Will Goodman and Caroline Brokaw Tucker

wgoodman@dunbarconsultants.com

cbrokawtucker@dunbarconsultants.com

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