(U-WIRE) PROVIDENCE, R.I. — This fall, Brown University hopefuls might want to consider a new potential aspect of the application process: their profiles on Facebook. Though they deny doing so on a regular basis, university admission officers sometimes follow up on anonymous tips to examine applicants’ profiles.
These days, Facebook is no longer a place just for students — as its Web site states, “All that’s needed to join Facebook is a valid email address.” There are currently 39 million active members on the social networking site.
“We don’t use Facebook unless someone says there’s something we should look at,” said Dean of Admission James Miller. But Miller conceded that admission officers take outside tips seriously. “Anything we get, we follow up on,” he said.
Associate Director of College Admission Elisha Anderson agreed with Miller. There is a “limit to what we can appropriately judge people on,” he said, but added, “You have to remember (Facebook) is a public place.” He said there was “maybe one case” in which Facebook yielded information that affected an admission decision.
Sometimes admission officers receive friend requests on Facebook from applicants, Anderson said, noting that accepting the requests “would appear weird.”
At least one admission officer at Brown questioned even case-by-case visits to Facebook profiles when evaluating applications.
“I don’t think that’s a fair practice,” said Victor Ning, a Brown admission officer who said he looks only at the materials the students send to the office. Though he said he doesn’t think admission officers consult Facebook during the application “reading season,” he still warned, “Students should definitely be careful,” adding that potential employers could be on Facebook too.
Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, was stunned that any admission officers would use Facebook in the admission process. “If they use it, our recommendation would be to stop immediately because it’s inappropriate,” he said.
Nassirian expressed concern about the importance of boundaries in checking students’ backgrounds.
“Where do you stop?” Nassirian asked. If admission officers began to systematically use Facebook, he worried, they might then begin to treat the admission process as an investigation.
The admission process should include only the information the student consents to giving, he said. For an admission officer to look at something the student has not submitted is “highly problematic,” Nassirian said.
Nassirian was to careful to distinguish between finding information accidentally and seeking it out in media like Facebook. It is acceptable if an admission officer were to accidentally find information about an applicant through a medium other than the application, he said.
Though the practice of checking on college applicants’ Facebook profiles is not widespread, Nassirian said, students should understand that their “behavior out there on the Web is behavior in public.”
Anderson said he has interacted with college applicants on Facebook. One student’s profile picture was “a little bit inappropriate,” Anderson said, so he sent the student a message advising him to change his picture.
“I don’t look at high school students who are applying to Brown on the Facebook,” he said. Still, his Facebook profile’s education and work information includes a description of his work at Brown: “I’m the Decider.”