Please read the following NYTimes Business Day article "They Loved Your GPA, Then They Saw Your Tweets". Engage the article in a discussion about its argument and the role of social media in your life. Is it fair for colleges to consider one's Facebook page or Twitter account as complements to a college application? Is this an invasion of privacy or should we be more careful what we post on the internet? If this is certainly a growing trend, could colleges gain access to our multiple screen names and avatars? Would you like an admissions counselor trolling through your Reddit up posts? Engage the article by referring to specific quotes, read each other's posts, and refer to one another in your responses. Feel free to bring in outside resources (links provide of course) and let's discuss!
I feel that with the increase in competition to get into a good college, the admissions offices with be looking for more and more ways to select their students. Taking a “snapshot” of our social media activity seems to be a pretty good and easy way to learn a lot about a student. However, from the eyes of a student, this is not a very good thing, mostly because it is a very biased and subjective way to judge a student’s academic ability. There might be things that are okay between you and your friends that might otherwise be frowned upon by society’s standards. Plus, we are teenagers and we’re bound to have made some mistakes in the past, which we might have corrected, and it would be a shame if that was the deciding factor in determining out whole future. I feel that social media in a place where you can relax and let go, without someone determining your fate in a sense looking over your shoulder on every move you make.
ReplyDeleteHowever, due to the technological advancements and the practicality of this, I feel it is inevitably going to happen.
ReplyDeleteAn admissions counselor going through someone's social media page is an invasion of privacy. There are so many things that could go wrong. As the article states, "colleges might erroneously identify the account of a person with the same name as a prospective student — or even mistake an impostor’s account — as belonging to the applicant, potentially leading to unfair treatment." Not only can this happen, but an "inappropriate" status on Facebook may not even be from that person. It could be from a friend who was joking around. Also, so what if someone has inappropriate photos/posts on a social media website? That is his/her on business, not the college's. As long as the student proves to be appropriate for the school through his/her own application, then there is no need for an admissions counselor to go through that student's social media website. After all, going through an applicant's social media posts can only hurt him/her, never help. As Victor says, "it is a very biased and subjective way to judge a student's academic ability." Often, an admissions counselor will misinterpret what he/she sees on the student's profile.
ReplyDeleteThis website features a list of things a student should do to cleanse his/her Facebook page.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/social-media-hurt-college-bid/story?id=17520370&page=2
However, I think that every single one of those options, especially number 5, "Remember to go through old posts, too" is absolutely ridiculous. A student's personal life has nothing to do with his/her academic one. If the student is able to prove him/herself responsible academically through the application, then everything should be good to go. Also, the idea that colleges would even look at an old post from five years ago is completely absurd. People are constantly changing. They should not be held accountable for something that they posted so long ago. I have been using Facebook for the past five or so years. Even though I doubt I've posted anything "inappropriate," I will not go through any of my posts or comments and delete anything when the time for submitting college application comes.
Numbers obviously do not define who a student is, but neither do social media posts.
I think colleges have good intentions when they consider one's Facebook page or twitter account before accepting a student. Victor is right when he says admission offices are looking for more ways to select their students. Accepting the wrong people into a school could easily change its environment and status. Although one's grades could be good, their influence might not be. Other people in the school may succumb to the peer pressure, changing the majority of the people negatively. However, many people act completely different online and if colleges base their judgments of a person's personality on facebook comments and statuses, they could get a wrong first impression and lose their chance in accepting a great person into the school. In the article, Angel B. Perez explains, "'We thought, this is not the kind of person we want in our community'" after seeing offensive comments the person posted about one of his highschool teachers. Yet, the reasons behind this post were not taken into account. The teacher could have done offensive acts to the student first. I think it is fair for colleges to consider online sources, but they should be aware that anything they see that affects the applicant negatively could have a meaningful explanation behind it. Although I agree with Angela that this could be considered an invasion of privacy, as teenagers, we are often told that whatever we post online will never be truly deleted. If the colleges dig up something that the person had not want seen, it is their own fault to post it up in the first place. We are warned not to put up anything we do not want the public to see. If something is truly private, we should not post it up. I don't think colleges should gain access to multiple screen names and avatars though because having access to those could easily give conflicting impressions of a person.
ReplyDeleteKaren Huang Period 3
I find myself siding with Angela in this debate. If you type in my name, "Eric Ferencz" into google, which I recommend you do, you'll find some pages that I would like you to see, but perhaps some other sites that I don't want you to see like my failed cooking blog or my six sentence story submission from years ago. Is it fair for me to be judge on my internet identity?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Angela that colleges looking at your social media is an invasion of privacy. But now that it's become a well known fact that colleges look at your social media sites college counselors have been teaching kids to clean up their social media sites. I think this totally defeats the purpose of looking at social media in the first place. If the point is to see who you are outside of your transcript, and to judge if you're the right type of student for their school they can't even do that anymore making the whole practice useless. The article says "'If you’ve got stuff online you don’t want colleges to see,' Ms. Heck said, 'deleting it is kind of like joining two more clubs senior year to list on your application to try to make you seem more like the person they want at their schools.'" I think it's trying to make it sound as though it's okay to clean up your social media account, because it's similar to joining clubs at the las minute which is mostly an accepted practice. But it just shows how artificial the college process is. How people try to be somebody they aren't to get into a school. You can see this so much at stuy with kids joining clubs, or volunteering because it will look good on a college app. Not because they have an interest in any of it. Though the intention behind looking at a student's social media may have been good, it will just become another way for students to paint a false picture of themselves to colleges.
ReplyDeleteI did google "Eric, Ferencz" and though I didn't look extensively through the millions of results I did find some interesting stuff. The first link was just a site that linked to this site. But the first image was a cat in an astronaut suit, then a bunch of people who I'm pretty sure aren't Mr.Ferencz. Even if all the results did manage to pertain to the right person it doesn't show who you are. Everything that goes on the internet stays there. Who you were years ago when you posted something says little about who you are now. I managed to find the cooking blog "Cooking with Eric!" (http://cookingwithericferencz.blogspot.com/). And though it was quite amusing to read it doesn't say who Mr.Ferencz is. It clearly doesn't show is interests too well because it has one lone post on cooling mussels. Though it was only two years old people change, and looking at stuff on the internet is very anecdotal and shows such a limited perspective.
I agree with Angela and Sisi that it is an invasion of privacy when colleges search through your personal pages on social media. This is not the right way to discover what kind of a student you are. Certainly even the cream of the crop students are not always so golden outside of the classroom setting. Social media pages are for a person's self expression, and the content should only be shared with those who are friends. It is not fair to judge a person based on their personal lives since it is private. For example, if a straight A student's Facebook profile was searched through, he or she may have pictures or information which the person would not like to share with colleges. I am sure none of us would like our possible future colleges to see that picture of us half naked in a bathing suit, or one of our embarrassing status updates from the fourth grade. "If colleges find seemingly troubling material online, they may not necessarily notify the applicants involved." As stated in the article, maybe there are parts of our personal lives which we just wish to keep private from colleges. It is not fair for them to go searching through our social media. If it is creepy for a complete stranger to creep on our social media pages, why is it acceptable for a college admissions office to do the same? Besides the information which we would like to keep private, what our social pages say about us may not be the exact person we are. We may be a completely different person outside of our web pages for the better or for the worse. I just really feel that colleges should not be allowed to consider a student's social media pages when searching for information since it is a complete invasion of privacy and would not correctly justify the kind of student a person is.
ReplyDeleteI am in agreement with Jarek, I think that it is an unfair way for colleges to judge borderline students and leave it up to social media as the final tipping point in deciding whether to admit them or not. While those who are straight A students and are already admitted into the college will be overlooked for their social media page, they may still have scandalous pictures that if colleges found would lead colleges to take back their offer. This is unfair because most high school students have a social media page and only some of them get affected by what's on it. This is definitely an invasion of privacy like Angela said because we did not give them permission to look into our personal lives. What if we looked up professors at the college and stalked their pictures when they were college kids, to see if they are up to our standard? This would not be fair, as I'm sure all these professors had something they would not want it to be publicized.
ReplyDelete“They imagine admissions officers are old professors,” he said. “But we tell them a lot of admissions officers are very young and technology-savvy.” This may be true, but does this give them a right to go into the personal lives of students? Those who are barely adults and to judge whether they are admitted based on what they said in their childhood? I don't think so. If this trend continues, colleges could gain access to multiple screen names through our friends and their exposed facebook/social media page. I don't think it's colleges giving us the benefit of the doubt when they check our pages. It is them trying to find a reason not to accept us because their pool is too great. The more common your name is, the more searches may pop up and the higher the chance of you being confused with someone else who looks like the same age as you. Colleges should find a more reasonable way to reduce their admission pool, by not tracking what we say to friends on our own free time.
We need to watch what we post on the Interwebs because whatever you post is going to stay there forever. Okay, that might be a bit exaggerated, but still. However, I strongly feel that we reserve the right to post things on the Internet without them affecting our college admission processes. What we do on the Internet is none of any college's business because our online actions cannot accurately define us academically nor morally. If this does indeed continue to be a growing trend with no signs of letting up, soon enough colleges will be able to track down our multiple avatars online. I feel how "guidance counselors are tutoring them in scrubbing their digital identities" is unnecessary if colleges could just respect our privacy. An example of how online posts do not accurately describe who we really are is Mr. Ferencz's cooking blog. Judging by it, we might think he is an expert, high-class chef, but in actuality, he is surprisingly an English teacher at Stuyvesant. In the same scope, colleges should respect our online privacy.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe its fair for colleges to judge someone based on one's social media account. Often times, when people are online and used things like Facebook, twitter, and etc, they try to be funny. Sometimes being funny might be present yourself in a negative way. However, those doesn't actually mean that your a bad person or student. For example, comedians may say some offensive things during their shows in order to make people laugh. Does what the comedian say define him as a person? I don't think so, and similarly people may try to act like comedians on facebook and etc. If colleges were to start tracking our social media accounts, than we will have to begin to take notice of what we say and do. I believe that takes away a lot of fun out of the internet. Things like Facebook are meant to for us to have fun, help us relax, and be teenagers. College tracking our accounts will take away that outlet of fun for us. With the growing amount of things we have to do to get into a good college, I don't think taking away our freedom online is something that should be taken away from us.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, they deserve to see what the person they are allowing to stay at their school is doing and get a general idea of who they are. Now, I understand that social networking is for fun and is definitely not the best representation of any person, but regardless, it is something that can be judged. I frequently make jokes in bad taste (like babies corpses, after sitting in a closet for over a month), and I would not show them to a college in any haste, but what they want to see of a person is up to them. It is there place after all.
ReplyDeleteThink of it this way: when you go to an interview, you aren't showing yourself. You are showing the best part of yourself. Are you always that formal and polite? I highly doubt it. And college essays? How often times will you push something into a far brighter light? The point I'm trying to make is that though people complain about how people can easily be misjudged negatively through social networking, isn't a misjudgment of how good a person through their bias essentially the same thing?
I would like to note that I typed "their' as "there" in the last sentence of the first paragraph, and am deeply ashamed.
DeleteI partly agree with Noah that the whole college admission process is a misjudgment of a student’s behavior in daily life, because sometimes we do post things on the internet that are impolite and unacceptable in public. However, why should we associate our private social life with our academic or work performance? One of the major reasons that we loosen our manner and post improper speeches online is because we wouldn’t normally say it publicly. We post inappropriate comments online because of a belief that the internet is separated from our public reputation. I believe that most of us have enough restrain and understanding that these comments shouldn’t be made publicly.
ReplyDeleteIt is unfair for colleges to be looking over our internet posts because there is not enough regulation to internet privacy. The primary blame is for social media like Facebook and Twitter, because they give a misconception that our posts are only limited within our friends. It isn’t our fault that we are not given enough distinction as to whether these internet platforms are considered public or private.
When prospective students apply to colleges, they showcase their academic achievement and their effort in applying. Then colleges give admission based on the student’s performance and the effort that they have put into their application. The process has been like this for decades. But now that we have social media that allow us to communicate or share our thoughts among our friends, and the colleges are creeping on our private life! Isn’t college an institution that gives opportunity to students? Then why should they ruin a student’s future because of things they have posted online that are completely unrelated to their academic performance?
Of course colleges have a right to LOOK at the social media in students' lives. However, if they judge students based on what they see, without telling students, then it's not fair. If colleges want to look at Facebooks or Twitters, they should tell students that's what they're going to do. Applying for colleges is difficult as it is; there's no need to make students worried about whether they'll be judged on their personal lives or not.
ReplyDeleteI can see why colleges would check these websites. With the opportunity, they want to check out applicants and make sure that they're not the type to cause any scandals or such. Colleges have a reputation to keep up, and I'm sure they wouldn't like to have a scandal surrounding any students. Looking at Facebook, for example, gives a really good idea, an actual idea, really, of what a person is really like. Personalities don't really show up on college applications.
However, I want to stress that colleges should not solely make a decision based on what they see. As many people have mentioned before, there's the case of misrepresentation. Some people may say things they don't actually mean, or it's someone else. Which is why if checking these pages, students should be asked to provide one. For some people, this may not be the best, but it's better than the alternative of risking something like the wrong identity.
On the issue of privacy, it's the internet! Like teachers have been telling us for years, be careful of what you put on it (no one listens though). If you do, ahem, bad things, and post it, then that's just your problem. (Moral: Don't do bad things.)
I agree with Jarek, Sisi, and Angela in that it is an invasion of privacy when colleges inspect your personal pages on social media. I understand that colleges search through applicants' Facebook account to obtain foul information about them, but to base their acceptance on this information is completely absurd because colleges may base their applicants’ acceptance on false information. Bradley Shear, a lawyer specializing in social media, says that “colleges might erroneously identify the account of a person with the same name as a prospective student — or even mistake an impostor’s account — as belonging to the applicant, potentially leading to unfair treatment.” There are many more ways admission officials may misinterpret information that they found online. I was upset when Perez, Pitzer's Dean of Admissions, "didn't admit the student" for what she found on his Facebook account. To simply reject a student from a college for petty comments or opinions is absurd. If colleges truly want to see the potential of students, colleges should host interviews to really test their students’ knowledge and intellect. Not sneak around on their applicants’ social media pages, obtaining potentially false information. In an interview, students are able to introduce their personality, convey their feelings, and share their dreams. A student should not be judged for their actions online, but they should be judged for their actions in real life.
ReplyDelete