What College Admission Officers Don't Like Seeing On Facebook: Vulgarity, Drinking Photos & 'Illegal Activities'

Last Friday, I was playing in the ocean in Laguna Beach, California. Next to me was a group of high school boys gleefully body-surfing in the rather large waves. One of them had a water-proof camera and was snapping photos of his friends before they disappeared in the waves’ crash. After one particularly epic wave throwdown, one of them shouted, “You have to tag me in that photo on Facebook!”
“Sure,” the photographer shouted back. “What’s your name there?”
“It’s John H S,” he shouted back. [Ed. note.: It was a first name and a set of letters, but I have changed them to protect the body surfer's identity.]
Yes, despite Facebook’s desire that people use their real names, there are still many users who employ pseudonyms there. And, by many accounts, young people seem to be the worst offenders. That may be a good thing. A recent survey from test-prep company Kaplan suggests that the under-18 set going undercover on Facebook are wise to do so. College admission officers are increasingly turning to Facebook and Google searches to research candidates, and they don’t always like what they find there. Kaplan polled “350 admissions officers from the nation’s top 500 colleges and universities.” This is what they found:

While the percentage of admissions officers who took to Google (27%) and checked Facebook (26%) as part of the applicant review process increased slightly (20% for Google and 26% for Facebook in 2011) from last year, the percentage that said they discovered something that negatively impacted an applicant’s chances of getting into the school nearly tripled – from 12% last year to 35% this year. Offenses cited included essay plagiarism, vulgarities in blogs, alcohol consumption in photos, things that made them “wonder,” and “illegal activities.” In 2008, when Kaplan began tracking this trend, only one in 10 admissions officers reported checking applicants’ social networking pages.

For those bad at math (and unable to get into M.I.T.), that means it’s almost tripled since 2008. More surprising is the huge spike in negative things found. Apparently, the class of 2012 lived it up.

The guy to blame for this.

The tool Mark Zuckerberg designed to help Harvard kids get to know each other may be keeping future applicants from getting into their dream schools. But universities are divided on whether or not it’s okay to go beyond the standard application in deciding whether or not to admit a student. Kaplan says only 15% of universities have a written policy on this, and that of those that do, 69% of them prohibit the “online stalking” of a potential frosh.
“We leave it up to the individual admissions officers, and if something gives them cause to scratch their head, then they do it,” Paul Marthers, vice president for enrollment at Troy, N.Y.’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute told  the Wall Street Journal. “But it’s a very small number. Among the 15,000 applications we get, it would be well under 100 times.”
Wake Forest University‘s dean tells the WSJ that they have seen applicants “involved in bullying behavior or alcohol or drugs.” She doesn’t necessarily say that was a bad thing, but I think we can assume so. And when it comes to online stalking to find students to recruit and throw money at, it seems that anything online is fair game:

Far more common than the use of social media to evaluate applicants is its use in recruiting potential students. Kaplan Test Prep’s survey found that 87% of colleges use Facebook for this purpose (up from 82% two years ago); 76% use Twitter (up from 56%); and 73% use YouTube (up from 56%). College admissions officers have not, however, embraced Google Plus – only 9% are using it to recruit prospective students.

So, kiddies, you should learn this lesson early: those that will influence your professional futures are coming to peek at your online footprint, so set your privacy settings accordingly. And be careful what you put out there. Lest you think it’s enough to use a pseudonym, do remember that it’s possible to hunt down a Facebook profile with a cell phone number or an email address. Or, for a particularly savvy searcher, to figure out who you are based on who you are friends with. (Ask Prince Harry.)
Alternately, just post your party pics on Google Plus.