The idea that colleges will look at students’ social media during the admissions decision-making process is not new. Kaplan Test Prep first began tracking this practice in 2008 when 10% of college admissions officers from the most selective colleges reported viewing applicant social media profiles during the admissions process. This first Kaplan survey was commissioned only four years after the founding of Facebook in 2004, which happens to be the same year as most of our current high school juniors were born.
Back in 2008, the idea that colleges would even consider passing judgment on students’ by viewing their social media was a controversial and newsworthy topic. Social media was still very much a novelty and Facebook was generally dismissed as a teenage infatuation. Social media was (and arguably still is) a place where teens posted impulsively and spontaneously without fear of consequence. These attention-getting posts left an indelible and traceable trail of shallow, unimpressive, and immature content. Unsurprisingly, the social media footprint discovered by colleges in the early days did not bode well for students. Thus was born the enduring myth that discoverable social media could only damage a college-bound student’s admissions chances.
Fast forward to 2021,…
