Mon, December 9, 2024

Growing Up in Public: Overemphasis on College Admissions

By Devorah Heitner, Author

The problem with “You won’t get into college if you post that!” 

Although parents often think their kids are oblivious to how they are perceived by others on social media—He didn’t even think before he posted that!—kids today are acutely aware that as they post images, videos, and comments, they are “curating” an online presence or persona. The tension is that, well, they are teenagers, experimenting with who they are. The digital persona they may want to communicate at that moment in their lives may not be one you are happy about. Your teenager may want to be known as sexy and “hot.” You probably don’t. They may want to be known as a grunge skater or as someone who doesn’t care about anything. You probably don’t want that, either. Parents tell me over and over: they are terrified their teenagers—who share and reveal more on social media than they are comfortable with—will post a picture or comment that will cost them admission to their top college.

The reality is, our kids’ futures—especially their college careers—don’t depend on their social media profiles. When applying to college, if your child isn’t eliminated by some overarching criteria such as not meeting the minimum grade requirements, the admissions committee will consider their file for only five to seven minutes. High school college counselor Jim Jump told me that “in the last ten to twenty years, [colleges] are getting many more applications. They’re not hiring more staff to read those applications. Students and parents would be appalled to realize…how little time colleges spend reading applications compared to how much time students spend on applications.” That short amount of time does not usually include an extensive online background check of candidates, or a deep dive into their social media history.

Colleges don’t “dig up dirt” on social media 

For the most part, colleges expect that most applicants are reasonably good human beings who are still developing. They trust that young people are who they say they are on their college applications. Admissions officers don’t go out of their way to dig up dirt on applicants. “The agreement is that your application will be reviewed fairly on whatever you report,” explains Sonja Montiel, an independent college counselor who’s been guiding high school students through admissions for over twenty years.

Tina Brooks in the Pomona College Admissions office agreed. “We don’t check a student’s social media as any part of the admissions process. On occasion, staff members may look at a student’s social media.” That may happen, Brooks explained, if the student includes a link to a URL to show off some relevant work they’ve done, like a video they starred in for an extracurricular activity. If the web site includes links to social media accounts, an admissions officer might follow that link and peruse the applicant’s profile.

A 2019 survey conducted by Kaplan revealed that 36 percent of admissions officers acknowledge sometimes checking some aspect of an applicant’s social media, an increase from 2018. However, they self-report that this is not something they do routinely, which means 64 percent of surveyed admissions officers report never checking any social media for any of the thousands of students they review. In all my conversations with college admissions staff, they emphasized the time limitations that would make an extensive “background check” implausible.

Colleges rarely reject students because of their social media (but it does happen sometimes)

An applicant at a highly competitive college is far more likely to be rejected because of “fit,” grades, or simply because the admissions committee chose a different student with achievements, talents, or background that better rounded out the incoming class in a certain way—rather than because of an online misstep. But when it happens, it is typically because a social media profile raised significant red flags about questionable or potentially problematic behavior. 

“We found a student’s Twitter account with some really questionable language,” said one admissions officer. “It wasn’t quite racist, but it showed a cluelessness that you’d expect of a privileged student who hadn’t seen much of the world. It really ran counter to the rest of her application.” Another admissions officer shared that “a young man who had been involved in a felony did not disclose his past, which is part of our admissions process. His social media page shared his whole story. If he had been forthcoming, we would not have rescinded his acceptance offer, but we had to.” Yet another admissions officer who’s real said that pictures of a student “brandishing weapons” gave him pause when deciding whether to admit the applicant. These are all examples of admissions officers deciding that a student might bring an undesirable trait (i.e., racism, insensitivity, unethical behavior, violence) to campus.

How likely is it that your child will be rejected for anything they posted on their social media accounts? According to a 2017 survey by Inside Higher Ed, just 7 percent of private schools report having done it at least once. But a whopping 93 percent of them said they have never turned away someone over a social media post.

When I asked journalist Jeffrey Selingo, author of Who Gets In and Why, if a social media profile can really torpedo an applicant, he agreed it is incredibly rare. But in the unlikely event that students are rejected due to something they posted, the college probably learned about these posts from someone who took it upon themselves to report them. “That’s how these schools are finding out about something on social media,” said Selingo. In other words, admissions officers aren’t out there scouring social media to find posts that will disqualify kids, but they may investigate the posts if someone brings them to their attention.

Although the number of students who have been turned away from colleges because of their social media is quite small, many of the parents I meet believe this is a significant threat. The media does love a good takedown story—for example, some students whose offers were rescinded from Harvard in 2017 got a lot of media attention. When we read stories like this, it is hard not to worry, especially since some of these cases have revolved around messages shared in private groups, just to a few friends. There is likely no way the university could have found something like that without it being brought to their attention by a third party.

Overemphasis on college admissions sends the wrong message about what truly matters 

Should we encourage kids to think before they post and not share every passing thought? Well, yes. But we should do it because we want our kids to avoid offending and harming others with their words or actions because it is inherently the right thing to do, not because we’re afraid they won’t get into college. We don’t wait for our kids to hit or say something mean to another kid in the playground and then tell them, “Next time, don’t get caught.” Most of us start teaching our kids that hurting others—physically or verbally—is bad from the time they are toddlers. Similarly, we shouldn’t wait for our kids to offend and hurt others (or themselves) online, either.

We should focus our energies not on catching and “cleaning up” unwanted behavior, but on helping our child to become as good a person online as they are in their in-person relationships. We need to talk to them about empathy. We need to model ethical behavior and expect it of them. We need to teach them how to balance their rights with those of others in a sensitive way. We need to show them how to respect and treat themselves and others well. We need to teach them that being a decent human being is its own quiet reward. No badge, blue ribbon, or Ivy acceptance comes with it—and that is okay.

Positive steps for kids to take online

Teaching kids to “clean up their social media,” or warning them not to do this or that because it might close doors in the future, seems like a good idea in theory. After all, presenting ourselves in the best light to colleges, potential employers, and the public at large is something we were encouraged to do ourselves when we were teenagers. That was fine advice–if you grew up at a time when “being in public” was limited to in-person interactions or one-way communications like applications and resumes. But for kids who grow up online, their everyday actions are constantly being captured by academic and behavioral apps and by their classmates, friends, and family. Making sure they are presenting themselves publicly in the “best light” is not so easy.

Devorah Heitner is the author of Growing Up in Public, a book helping parents guide tweens and teens toward greater awareness of social media, where everything can be shared and compared.

This article appeared in the 2024 issue of the Parents League Review. Get the current issue of the Review free with a family membership. Or purchase it separately.