By Joy Hanna
Imagine this: you are the ideal student. You have straight A’s; your essays are amazing and over the top; you should have a 100% chance of getting into your dream school. But what if the thing that is keeping you from getting accepted into your dream school is not your GPA or your academics, but rather your social media accounts.
What college do I want to go to? What do I want to become when I’m older? How can I get into this college? These are some of the common questions that students consider before going to college. However, students should also ask: How will my social media posts affect my college application?
Living in 2021, teens have a variety of social media accounts such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok, etc. It’s normal for us to share our lives and to interact with friends and family online, but for someone who is applying to college, these social media sites have become grounds for college admissions officers to see students as “inappropriate,” which could unfortunately cost you in acceptance into your dream school.
A 2017 American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers survey found that 11 percent of respondents denied admission due to social media content and seven percent took back previously offered positions for social media reasons as well, according to U.S. News and World Report.
Being denied for failing grades or not enough effort put into extracurricular activities seems fair, but for posts to social media?
There are many colleges that look into your personal life. However, this is absurd. A post of you partying, a tweet of you saying something funny, or even holding a wine bottle can lead you into not getting into a school that you have dreamt of going to for many years. You have all the right things for this college; but social media got in the way, and the college admissions officer rejected you. Although these pictures might not illustrate the best representation of yourself, colleges should not be looking into social media accounts because people are very different when it comes to their outside life from school and their academics, and college admissions officers should consider that.
“Colleges have denied certain students admission based on their officers’ findings, despite the applicants’ impressive GPAs, test scores and other accomplishments. In addition, those students are not notified that their social media profiles are the cause of their rejection,” Cecilia Callas, a reporter of the Daily Trojan said.
Colleges should take into account that these social media accounts often have misleading information. We often post things to social media to try to represent ourselves as something that we are in fact not. Therefore, an admissions officer should not judge this student based on what their social media holds because these individuals have worked too hard for their confidence and happiness to be ruined by being rejected because of a social media post. You are worth more than a random picture or tweet that you post on a platform that is ultimately for you to relax and take your mind off something frustrating like school.
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