Facebook: Are Colleges Really Looking?

Recently, MoreThanGrades attended the New York State Association for Admission Counseling forum at Fordham University. Also in attendance were several colleges, a room full of admission counselors, and other professionals who are involved in the college admission process. It was the perfect time for us to ask the question many were pondering: Do colleges actually look at a student's facebook profile?

Before I give you their answers and the reason for their answers, I also undertook a twitter campaign to address the same question, posing it to all the colleges who follow us on twitter. In both cases, the answers were pretty much the same. No.

In the blog world, there was a posting recently by Kaplan about the use of Facebook in college admission. They concluded from their questioning that 80% of colleges use Facebook for college admission. But if we look at this number a little closer, the true use of Facebook becomes clear.

Most of the college we surveyed, including the colleges in attendance at the NYSACAC forum, overwhelmingly agreed that the use of Facebook in making a decision about admitting a student was pretty much zero. To substantiate their claim, they pointed out that the number of students who applied to their respective schools this year had increased dramatically, leaving little time to go hunting for information. Many of these same schools have dropped interviews for the same reason -time. With several thousand applications to read and decide upon, trolling Facebook for embarrassing photos or self-destructive postings was unrealistic. So what are colleges using Facebook for? Social interaction.


Many colleges have come to appreciate that students of today are not looking for information in the same way students of just a few years ago did. Often the college search starts on-line. To address this trend, many colleges have created Fanpages on Facebook so students can get the information they want in a way that is meaningful for the student. With Fanpages, colleges can not only post information about what is going on, they can get the personal interactions many student crave. As with any new technology, it is not perfect, but it does provide an additional way for students and colleges to connect other than college fairs and school visits.

What the future holds for colleges, students, and the admission process is unclear. As access to information becomes easier and faster, the use of social media may factor into the application process. But as of right now, that does not seem to be the case. Still....if you were promised a scholarship from a college, you might want to remove anything embarrassing from your profile -just in case.

Our next topic: Should all colleges eliminate the SAT/ACT exam in lieu of a school based exam that cannot be prepped for? Let us know what you think.

Mike, Co-Founder of MoreThanGrades.com