A number of you took a crack at UVA’s “To tweet, or not to tweet?” supplemental essay this fall which yielded a lot of good conversation about the value of interpersonal communication and the challenges students experience as their sense of appropriate personal boundaries dissolve.  There are, to be fair, benefits and drawbacks to Twitter and all social media outlets. We’ve enjoyed hearing your perspectives.

This week there’s been some additional discussion of the role that social media activity can play in the review of a student’s college application.   Are admission officer’s really clicking through photos from the weekend’s big game as they determine how involved you might be on their campuses?   Are they getting to know you through your sarcastic Twitter humor?

Scares the daylights out of you doesn’t it?

Although few admission office’s are making a formal, purposeful review of Facebook profiles and Twitter feed comments part of their selection processes students are wise to be mindful of the eternal footprint they leave while online.  In a New York Times Technophoria article, entitled They Loved Your GPA, Then They Saw Your Tweets, Natasha Singer discusses increased online scrutiny of college hopefuls.

For a more in depth review of these questions I’d encourage you to read the National Association of College Admission Counseling’s Research to Practice brief on this topic entitled Social Media: Considerations and Implications in College Admission

Whatever your personal stance on participating in the various social media outlets available, there is no doubt that they are here to stay.  Be a smart consumer of the options and recognize that colleges consider their use an important component of their recruitment strategies.  Let us know how we can help!

Jennifer Scott, Senior Associate Director of College Counseling,
Norfolk Academy
Fall, 2013