What you do online does impact your college plans

Today's top story from Education Week is how a high school student's online behavior can jeopardize his or her college plans as increasingly more college-admissions officials are using the social sites to learn about the students applying to their colleges.

Reporter Robin Flanagan writes, "The number of college-admissions officials using Facebook and other social-networking sites to learn more about applicants quadrupled over the past year, according to New York City-based Kaplan Test Prep, the test preparation division of Kaplan Inc."

What are they finding? You may be surprised to hear ~

"In the company’s 2011 survey of admissions officers from the top 500 colleges and universities, 12 percent reported that their discoveries, including photos showing underage drinking, vulgarities in blogs, and plagiarism in essays, negatively affected the chance of admission."

Flanagan further reports how "Eric Sheninger, the principal of New Milford, NJ High School had students in a Digital Journalism class Google themselves to become more familiar with their digital footprints. The students, from freshmen to seniors, were surprised at the “page after page of content” that came up. One girl was astonished when she found a picture of herself she’d never seen before; she couldn’t even remember where or when it was taken. Next, Mr. Sheninger took a poll: 75 percent of the students had accepted a “friend” request on Facebook from someone they’d never met. He had them consider the fact that if they post an inappropriate picture, anyone can easily take a screen shot of that image and post it anywhere online without permission"

What can you do? Among its points, Education Week suggests the following:

Encourage Web Searches
Google yourself; you may be surprised -- and very concerned -- at what turns up.

Repeat the Message
Drill home the potential dangers of inappropriate social-media behavior.Don't post anything online you wouldn’t want the entire world to see.

Get Parents Involved
Chances are that parents are unaware that a child’s digital footprint can affect college applications, and many times what happens outside of school ends up spilling onto school grounds and quickly onto social-networking sites.

Craft a Formal Plan
Develop a formalized plan for encouraging positive social-media choices and stressing the dangers of poor ones.

SOURCE: Education Week

For related stories, read:

• "Revising Facebook Pages Before Applying to College," (College Bound Blog) October 12, 2011.
• "College-Admissions Officers Check Out Students on Facebook," (College Bound Blog) April 22, 2011.