Facebook Don'ts for College Applicants

MyFoxHouston - Social networking websites like MySpace and Facebook can often you a glimpse at someone’s personal life, but if you have a son or daughter applying for college, that glimpse can ruin their chances at getting into the school of their choice.

A September report in the Wall Street Journal says the photos, videos, and comments high school students put online could come back to haunt them. The survey says out of the top 500 colleges, 10 percent of admissions officers acknowledged looking at social networking websites to evaluate applicants. And out of those, 38 percent of schools said what they saw online negatively affected the applicant’s admission.

In short -- what your young student puts online could keep them from getting into a college of their choice.

This doesn’t mean you can’t have fun and be personable on Facebook; they just need to know where to draw the line.

First tip: understand that even with privacy functions enabled, people can still get some information. Everyone should choose their main profile photo wisely, and make it something appropriate. One college admitted to immediately denying a teen who was posing with guns in his profile picture.

Facebook offers a lot of options to block access to people you don’t know. For instance, photos can be set so that only your friends can see them. But that doesn’t prevent others from tagging your child in a photo, and that photo might get out into the public depending on the friend’s privacy settings. This means kids in a digital ages should be careful of how they are photographed, and if a friend does upload a questionable photo, they shouldn’t be afraid to ask them to take it offline.

Second tip: be careful of what your child’s friends put online. Anyone can write on your child’s profile and post web links, photos, video, jokes, etc. If your student doesn’t remove inappropriate comments, it may seem like they approve of the messages. Facebook’s privacy settings also let you disable the ability for other people to write on your profile, or “wall” as it’s called.

Third tip: consider taking a professional, resume-like approach to any online presence. You can clean it up by 1) untagging and removing photos that show too much of a “party life” 2) avoid talking too much about politics and personal interests 3) avoid the use of offensive language or talking about drug use, alcohol, or sex.

This may all sound a bit extreme, but it’s a sacrifice many professionals have to make. Ask yourself, “would I want my grandmother to see that?” If the answer is no, then you probably don’t want it online either.