by Leigh Campbell

According to the New York Times, new research from Kaplan Test Prep suggests that online scrutiny of college applicants has increased. There has been a 5 percent increase in the number of college admissions officers who claim they have visited an applicant’s Facebook or another social media account.

“Admission offices are tech savvy and the use of social media to recruit students has increased dramatically,” STA college counselor Debi Hudson said. “It’s easy to check an applicant’s digital profile to learn more about them.”

STA senior Madeline Cozad decided to protect her Twitter account and delete her last name so college admissions officers could not view her account.

“I protected my Twitter account when I first started applying to colleges and I pretty recently unprotected it but I took out my last name from my account name so if people google search my name they can’t find me,” Cozad said.

31 percent of 381 college admissions officers claimed to have visited an applicant’s social media account, according to the Kaplan report. Cozad believes the number of admissions officers viewing applicants’ profiles has increased because the accounts are a good judge of someone’s character.

“If I were a college admissions counselor I would probably check applicants’ Twitter accounts just because you can see who that person is and if you want them to be at your institution,” Cozad said.

As online checking has increased, there has been a decrease in the number of admissions officers who claim that online scrutiny has negatively affected an applicant’s chances of admission, according to the Kaplan report.

“General rule of thumb, don’t post anything that an admission office, employer or your grandmother should not see,” Hudson said.

At STA, 35 percent of surveyed students said they would be “not at all concerned” if a college admissions officer were to do an online search of them right now. 45 percent said they would be “not too concerned” and 18 percent said they would be “somewhat concerned. And just 5 percent said they would be “very concerned.”

In comparison, another Kaplan survey stated that 50 percent of surveyed students would “not at all concerned” if a college admission officer were to do an online search of them right now, 27 percent would not be “too concerned” and 14 percent would be “very concerned” while 9 percent said they would be “somewhat concerned.”

Cozad believes that colleges have the right to view applicants’ online profiles because of the public nature of the internet.

However, according to the New York Times, lawyers like Sean Shear, who specializes in social media law, believe that colleges checking applicants’ online profiles is harmful. Shear stated that colleges might misidentify the applicant’s profile online which leads to unfair treatment.

“As we get into the college process I remind students to clean up all social media and their entire technology presence,” Hudson said. “Posting too much personal information and/or pictures, as well as info about a college you’ve visited or anything college related, can be risky.”