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College Applications Negatively Affected By Facebook Profiles, Study Finds

by Tim Stevens on November 9, 2008 at 02:24 PM

Facebook and MySpace Pages Might Impact College AdmissionsIf you thought your Facebook and MySpace pages were just good for keeping in touch with friends, think again. We've shown how they can impact how potential employers perceive you, and so it should be no surprise that college admissions officers, the people who decide whether you're in or out, are also doing some profile surfing before deciding on accepting or rejecting a given candidate.

According to recent survey at 500 colleges by education company Kaplan, 10-percent of the admissions officers headed on over to Facebook and MySpace to see what they could learn about a given candidate. More troubling (at least for those with questionable goods on their profiles) is that 38-percent of those officers said their impressions of the students in question were "negatively affected" after looking at the profiles on Facebook or MySpace, potentially preventing the receipt of a fat admission letter from the school.

Some might question whether this practice is legal or ethical, since social-networking profiles aren't the same as recommendations sent in voluntarily by college applicants. While the practice is ethical or not is up for debate, but it's certainly legal. Anything you post up for all to see on Facebook is out there in the public, so if it's used against you, there's nobody to blame but yourself. [From: The Wall Street Journal]


Tags: college, college admissions, CollegeAdmissions, education, facebook, myspace, privacy, school, social networking, SocialNetworking, studies, web

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