There are three key technology rules when it comes to applying to college:
- Create a new email account just for the messages that will be sent to and from colleges.
- Check this email daily until you start college. There will be links to completing transcripts, notices of missing application parts, and more that will require immediate action.
- Clean up any and all social media pages you have.
Students, you tend to get the first two. Email may be old-school to you, but this is how most colleges contact you, even once you enroll. This makes it easy to keep track of college contacts, and it's probably all for the best colleges not know your personal e-mail address is ladiesgoforme@mymail.com
But try and talk the pluses of website maintenance to you, and you’re convinced your counselor roamed the Earth with dinosaurs. You insist colleges don't care about social media accounts, and are too busy to check them — to prove it, students will ask colleges if they look, and the colleges will say no.
Fair enough — except when I asked a college if they looked, their answer was "Do you really think I'd tell you if we did?"
Or, worse yet — “We don’t check, but if we hear about one that’s especially bad, we look.”
Play it safe. Rough language, risky pictures — even having an account under another name — can hurt you and anyone else who's in those questionable photos with you. Once you've tidied up yours, ask your friends to take anything off their pages that makes you look iffy. After that, search for yourself on the web, and see what's there. You might not need to address it or be able to do anything about it, but it's better for you to know before the colleges do.
And even if the colleges don't look, they sometimes find out in very remote ways that can do serious damage...
(Based on a true story that happened somewhere else.)
Now Daisy thought she was all that
She knew she was a winner
A 3.9, a 32
The gal was no beginner.
Took five APs and tutored, too
Her homework was a snap
Spent most nights on the media
Just dishin' out some smack
She posted pix of homecoming
Her folks would see as knockouts
But dog, they'd never seen them, since
Her Instagram was blocked out
You can't imagine her surprise
When her counselor said "Hey Daisy
I got a call from East Coast U
The news will make you crazy!
The U was ready to admit
When in arrived their intern
'The buzz is all on Insta, man
These pics will make your hands burn.'
The intern loaded up the page
Of some homecoming hijinks
And in the photo, there was you—
Which made our rep do eye blinks.
"They saw your picture once or twice
And thought they'd overlook it
But then they read your online smack
And that's what really cooked it.
Your essays were all erudite
And very nicely tailored
But then they saw the real you
Has language like a sailor.
They read your app and loved you, girl,
It's you they were admittin'
But now they said they just can't take
A profane party kitten."
So dudes and dudettes, hear me out
Few colleges go lookin'
But if bad Instagrams are seen
That just can't be mistooken
Your full ride dough, your dream admit
Are goin' down the tank—gone!
And all because you tried to be
A social media icon.
