The Impact of Social Media on College Admissions

In our modern, connected society, social media platforms have become important ways to communicate, express ourselves, and meet new people. As the competition to get into college gets tougher, a student's digital footprint may have a big impact on their chances of getting in. As college counselors, it's our job to help students figure out how to use social media responsibly, since a bad online presence can have a lot of effects.

Admissions officers at colleges are more and more likely to look at applicants' social media accounts to learn more about them. Some schools even have staff members whose sole job is to do this. A student's social media activity can impact their application positively or negatively. For example, a positive post might show off a student's extracurricular activities, while a negative post might use bad language or show behavior that is questionable. Recent news stories about students losing scholarships or admissions offers because of offensive or controversial posts on social media show how important it is to keep a good online reputation.

If you want to help students keep a good online reputation, you could give them the following tips in bullet points:

• Regularly review and clean up social media profiles, removing or hiding any content that could be viewed negatively by admissions officers

• Manage privacy settings carefully, and share personal information only with trusted friends and family

• Create and share content that emphasizes achievements, interests, and positive experiences, showcasing unique qualities and values

• Avoid controversial or inappropriate content, such as political, religious, or offensive material, which may alienate admissions officers

• Monitor tagged content and manage friend/follower lists to maintain control over their online presence

As counselors, we play a pivotal role in guiding students through the digital age. It is important to teach them about how their social media presence could affect their chances of getting into college and about the bigger safety risks that come with sharing personal information online. Students will be able to build a positive online presence if they are shown how to manage their social media profiles well, including privacy settings and content curation. Talk about possible red flags and stress how important it is to manage your online reputation. This will help students make smart decisions about how they use social media. Students can learn important skills for success in today's connected world by getting help and resources for navigating the digital landscape.

For students to do well in college and beyond, it is important to help them find a good balance between online and offline activities. It's important for students to develop strong interpersonal skills, and counselors should remind them that face-to-face communication and building relationships are important for both personal and professional growth. Students can stand out when applying to college and learn valuable life skills by taking part in meaningful extracurricular activities and volunteering in their communities. Promoting a well-rounded student experience that extends beyond social media can help students lay a solid foundation for success in college and their future careers.

Social media has a big effect on getting into college, and keeping a good online reputation is becoming more and more important for students who want to get into competitive schools. Students need to make sure they have a good online reputation because posting inappropriate or controversial content can have long-lasting effects. College counselors play an important role in helping students navigate the digital age by giving them support and tools for managing their social media presences well. Students learn the skills they need to do well in college and beyond by getting a good mix of online and offline experiences.

Admissions Decisions

One of the components of the college application process that we tend to neglect to address too much in advance of applications is the assortment of possible results that colleges might share. None of this really informs application strategy or process, so we prefer to wait until applications are submitted and even until results start rolling in to share the possibilities. That said, what follows is a primer of sorts for application results. Keep in mind that colleges and universities the world over are left to their individual whims to determine what, how, and when to release results. As such, while this list may seem exhaustive, there are probably plenty of types of results that we are not including. Still, here are the most common ones!

• (Unconditional) Admit. This is the traditional “accept” response, which means that you have been offered a place in the freshman class. Although this variety of result does not traditionally include any mention of conditions for the student to meet, most universities will expect that the student continue on performing academically in a manner consistent with that shown through their application, even if this is not explicitly stated. (Read: No senior slump!)

• Conditional Admit. This means that the student is being offered a spit in the freshman class so long as they meet certain conditions that the acceptance outlines. Most commonly, this includes specific IB exam scores. If the student does not meet those conditions, then the offer of admission turns to a deny.

• Deny. This means that the student’s request for admission is declined and that they are not being offered a space in the school. In the vast majority of cases, this means that the student may not apply again until the next application cycle.

• Defer. When a student has applied through an early round -- such as binding Early Decision or non-binding Early Action or some other non-Regular deadline application -- the term “defer” means that they are postponing making a decision until the regular decision pool. However, it is not uncommon for a regular decision application to receive a “defer” decision; in this second case, this means that the admissions office is not yet ready to render a decision on the application and that they will wait for more information or even for the admissions process to play out with other students before they make the decision on whether to admit or deny.

• Waitlist. This one is a bit trickier. When a college is not able to offer an offer of admission to a student but feels that they would love to have the student if the space is available later, then they will employ a waitlist. This means that the student has been essentially denied but there might be the chance of a late admissions; in this way, the student needs to decide whether to accept the spot on the waitlist or to, essentially, be denied. If they accept the spot on the waitlist, then they must deposit at another school since some waitlist offers do not come until late in the summer. If a college fills entirely, they will typically email and release all students on their waitlist. Be sure to communicate closely with your counselor if this one plays out for you.

• January (Midyear) Admit or Deferred Admit. Sometimes colleges may not have space in the freshman class for the fall entry period, so they will instead offer space in a later semester. In essence, this gives the student the first semester off. Also, sometimes universities will render offers of admission for later years; in some such cases, these offers were requested -- as in the case of a student who wants to take a gap year who asks for deferred admission -- but in other cases, the university makes the decision unilaterally.

• Alternative Campus (Admit). Sometimes universities are not able to offer admission to a particular campus and instead will offer admission to a satellite campus, either permanently or temporarily. It is increasingly common for universities with international branches to offer admission to a student to spend the first semester or year at a secondary campus before coming to the main campus.

• Alternative Major (Admit). Sometimes students are not admitted for their top major and instead are offered admission if they agree to pursue a different program or major. Sometimes this contingency is built into the application process whereby the university asks for a ranking of top majors, but sometimes the university will reach out in special circumstances to offer admission to a secondary major for which they deem the student to be a good fit.

• Preferred or Guaranteed Transfer. This one perhaps has the most variation, although it is rare overall. Some schools will tell a student that while they are not admitted for the first year, they would be given special consideration or even guaranteed admission if they applied as a transfer student after attending freshman year elsewhere. Usually there is a specific GPA that must be met. Sometimes there are specific courses that must be taken. Also, sometimes the university will specify a specific institution that the student must attend, like a community college.

Again, there is technically an infinite number of potential outcomes from universities, but these are the most common ones. Also, to be clear, the reasons for universities making these decisions are not included here. Sometimes we can figure out why certain decisions are made, but most of the time we do not know. Nevertheless, be sure to share all results with your counselor!

The Phantom Applicant

A good friend of mine used to work in the admissions office of a hyper-selective liberal arts college. This was a few years back, and while the technology has changed, the process has not. He shared with me that whenever there was an interaction with a student, it was recorded in one way or another in a manilla folder, so when the application arrived, it joined a cataloguing of visits to campus, inquiry cards completed at fairs, email exchanges with the reps, etc. Essentially, all manner of “demonstrated interest” (or DI) was kept on file and taken into account during the application review. However, if an application arrived and no materials existed for that particular student, the application was deemed a “phantom applicant” and placed in a red folder (instead of the manilla folder). Now I won’t go into the details about the ways in which this particular institution factored the paper-trail of DI into their application review given how varied this can be among different colleges, but suffice it to say that the students in the red folders began the application review process at a disadvantage compared to those who had demonstrated interest.

Now the mistake in hearing this is to manufacture and construct artificial mechanisms and reasons for demonstrating interest. As I share with my students, while I may not be able to give any secrets about how to guarantee admission into any particular schools, I can share unequivocally how not to be admitted to any institution: be disingenuous! The college admissions process mostly has a great sense of that which is genuine and that which is not. So, to be clear, I do not advocate demonstrating interest for the sake of demonstrating interest. Instead, I adhere strictly to a belief that good DI is merely good research.

In today’s day and age, the internet is our primary means for research, and some college websites are better than others. However, what it means to research a university is something that we, as educators, do not always establish with our students. What does it mean to research a school? Here’s a thought that I use… I encourage students to defer immediate, gut reactions when researching. It is not a light-switch, either on (yes) or off (no). Instead, I want students to consider it to be an accounting and balancing, more of the variety of a pros and cons listing. Unfortunately, what I have found is that a student will go to a website and find two or three things about a school — maybe even the elements of their criteria that initiated the search — and then stop researching. Instead, I ask students to withhold that final determination of yes/no in favor of a more thorough examination. What I ask is for them to come up with at least three pros and at least three cons. The diligent researcher might come up with 50 pros before she comes up with 3 cons; this school, then, might be a yes! Conversely, a student might come up with 8 cons before he finds that third pro; this one might be a no! In proceeding through this process, though, a student is really just deepening their search criteria by establishing which elements of a school are most important. In the end, though, the student needs to keep researching past their search criteria, to keep digging at what elements of a school are particularly important to them and which unique elements of specific schools really stand out.

However, coming back to the internet and demonstrated interest, at some point in the research process there will come a need to learn more. In an ideal world, the student would be able to visit each college of interest, but this is increasingly impossible. However, in lieu of going to the school for a formal visit and information session, the student should absolutely reach out to the trained professionals in the admission office to get their questions answered. It is true that there are plenty of institutions (e.g. USC, NYU) that do not track DI as part of their process; however, if a student’s outreach and connection with a school — the traditional domain of DI — are genuine and related to his or her active research process, regardless of whether the school tracks DI, the outreach benefits the student by providing the answers to their questions. Again, good DI is just good research.

In the end, when a student takes their search and research process seriously, there should be no concerns about DI, as their research should have led them to an effective demonstration, whether or not the individual institutions track it. Seen this way, the parable of the phantom applicant makes a bit more sense: the students in the red folders can be seen, through one lens, of begin poor researchers. So, ultimately, don’t be a phantom applicant! Be a good researcher!

Things to Know about Depositing at a College

With many college acceptances coming through and many more on their way, now is a great time to review the practice of depositing at a college. In its simplest possible form, students may send in a deposit to only one college or university by the designated deadline. In the United States, that date is May 1 each year, the National Candidates’ Reply Date. The one exception to this rule about sending only one enrollment deposit is when students are admitted off of a waitlist at another college;  these students may submit a second deposit but must notify the initial college and forgo their deposit to that institution.

If you have any questions about this process whatsoever, please consult with your college or guidance counselor!

The thing to understand is that your school counselor can only send a final transcript — the final piece of the application to a US college — to one institution (with the exception of waitlist acceptances), so be sure to know what the protocol and expectations are.

First, some vocabulary… A deposit is a nonrefundable sum of money required by a college for an admitted student to reserve his or her place at the college; in essence, the deposit signifies the student’s intention to enroll at that institution.  In the US, the deposit is typically US$200-$800, while they tend to be more expensive elsewhere (e.g. in Hong Kong, one student was asked for a US$3500 deposit).

To double-deposit is to submit deposits to more than one institution. This is an unethical practice considering a student would be indicating to two or more different colleges that he or she intends on enrolling there when he or she can only attend one. To be clear, though it is debatable whether a student could be “caught” double-depositing and in any way held accountable (and there are certainly those who do not see the practice as unethical), most high schools see a firm obligation to uphold the principles of the issue. Upon applying (see below), applicants are asked to agree not to double deposit, and colleges reserve the right to rescind offers to students caught double-depositing. Additionally, failing to respect this practice can hurt schools’ working relationships with specific colleges and universities. Finally, with the exception of schools where a student is admitted off the waitlist, school-based counselors can and will submit a student’s final transcript to only one college or university after graduation.

Here is the statement that students must agree to on the Common Application, though other applications typically include some similar language:

I affirm that I will send an enrollment deposit (or equivalent) to only one institution; sending multiple deposits (or equivalent) may result in the withdrawal of my admission offers from all institutions. [Note: students may send an enrollment deposit (or equivalent) to a second institution where they have been admitted from the waitlist, provided that they inform the first institution that they will no longer be enrolling.]

It is our experience that some colleges, particularly large residential universities in the US, may ask for a housing deposit ahead of the May 1 deadline to reserve a space in campus housing. Students may choose to submit these deposits independently of their decision to submit an enrollment deposit, and such housing deposits should be refundable. Be sure to read the expectations carefully!

One additional complication, in our experience, is when a student is navigating acceptances across international boundaries where the notification and/or deposit deadlines do not align. Generally, students should seek guidance from their school-based counselors to ensure that they are proceeding ethically, but it is quite common for school-based counselors to recommend that students stick to just one deposit at a time.

Overall, in closing, it should be reiterated that if you have specific questions pertaining to this part of the process, please be in touch with your school-based college or guidance counselor.

2019-20 Common Application Prompts Released

The Common Application recently announced the essay prompts the members of the Class of 2020 will have to tackle. They are as follows:

1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

2. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

4. Describe a problem you've solved or a problem you'd like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma - anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.

5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

6. Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

7. Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.