You likely remember those stressful months in your senior year as you labored over your Stern application. There were essay questions, transcript requests, a list of your extracurricular activities, and the endless stream of repetitious forms that were likely responsible for the memorization of your social security number. But in addition to your resume, did the YU admissions office pay close attention to your Facebook page and Twitter account? Does the admissions office have a policy regarding prospective students’ social media footprints and how does YU’s policy compare to other colleges in the U.S.?
In a recent New York Times article entitled, “They Loved Your G.P.A. Then They Saw Your Tweets,” journalist Natasha Singer investigated the policies of admissions offices in a variety of universities, focusing specifically on whether or not the universities researched prospective students’ social media and other online activities. As this research would be for the purpose of learning more about the student, it could involve looking for both red flags (posts or comments that reflect negatively on the student’s character) and green flags, such as postings of awards or projects. While none of the schools she interviewed had any official policy, and most did not look at the social media of prospective students, some do allow their admissions officers to do online research about prospective students’ on an as-needed basis.
The larger question, of course, is what sort of policy YU admissions has. Need applicants to YU undergraduate and masters programs make a point to edit their Facebook pages? Should they post papers or projects in order to impress an admissions officer looking for further information?
Rabbi Kenneth Brander, Vice President for University and Community Life and The David Mitzer Dean of the Center for the Jewish Future (CJF), responded with an emphatic no.
“We do not actively ‘check out’ each student using social media sites,” said Rabbi Brander. He explained that this policy is based on the fact that YU Admissions uses a “High Touch Approach to recruitment” – high involvement with the potential students.
“We don’t purchase lists,” said Rabbi Brander. “For example, the College Board’s SAT® program sells lists of [high school] juniors and seniors indicating those who are Jewish and have high SAT grades. We don’t buy those lists. We have professional relationships with all of the schools that we recruit from [and] those close relationships we have with our feeder high schools allow us to gain insight into our applicants. We also interview every potential student, which is no longer the norm in other universities. With that much interaction with our potential students and the fact that we re-engage with a large percentage of them in Israel, we don’t see any need to use social media [or other online research].”
It should be noted, however, that universities likely keep track of their own mentions on the internet by whatever sources, for PR purposes. So if a prospective student were to post a disparaging comment on Twitter about a university, that school may still see that post.
“Students [have] posted comments on Facebook which may come to our attention,” noted Rabbi Brander.
Whether a university or grad school has a policy to research potential students using social media or not, common sense would dictate that in any event, one should be careful about what one posts on the internet. Snooping admissions officers aside, Natasha Singer noted in her article that, today, it is a given that businesses will be checking out job candidates’ online profiles.
“Nothing is private on the Internet,” cautioned Rabbi Brander. “And while you might not care about a certain posting in high school or in college, it may come to harm you about issues much more important than university acceptance.”