I’ve written before (here and here) about how information shared on social media can (and has) hurt students’ candidacy for admission. But I did not know this tidbit, courtesy of financial aid expert Mark Kantrowitz:
“Kantrowitz suggests that students applying for scholarships clean up their Facebook and Twitter accounts to exude a more professional online presence. ‘More than a quarter of scholarship providers require finalists to friend them so they can look for red flags,’ he says. ‘Google yourself, to see what comes up,’ he adds. ‘The scholarship providers will.’”
You can read the rest of the article here.
I have no idea what social media tools high school kids are using these days—when my business partner, Arun, advised a classroom of students last year to make their Facebook profiles private, he said they looked at him like he was wearing pleated jeans.
But the particulars are less important than the practice. Whatever you’re using, make it clean, or make it private.