AdComs Checking Out Facebook, etc?

[MisterJon]

Greetings fine denizens of SDN!

I was actually just wondering if admissions committees would look applicants up on facebook, myspace, etc. I know this is probably a dumb, unfounded, irrational fear of mine, but I know people who have had others post fake facebook and myspace accounts up which essentially slandered their characters.

I was just wondering if this would be a type of tool that adcoms might utilize?

I apologize if I'm being overly paranoid here, I just feel like no matter what I do something is going to stop me from getting into med school, that it's just too good to be true...

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[mubaby]

I have no idea if they do or not, but you could always err on the side of caution, and make sure you don't have anything on your FB that would look bad to adcoms. Make everything private and make sure you're friends with people you actually know. That's probably good for anyone anyway...

 

[organdonor]

I have several friends who temporarily disabled their facebook accounts during application season for this reason. I have no idea if adcoms look at that kind of stuff or not to be honest. Some of them haven't heard anything and I got admitted. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary to hide my profile, although I am somewhat cautious as to what I put on there anyway. I have my profile set to where only friends can view it and I don't always confirm everyone. That said, it might look bad if I ignored a friend request from XX University Admissions Committee!!!

 

[SabC]

You can also change your settings so that you don't show up in searches at all.

 

[jkhanh]

I have several friends who temporarily disabled their facebook accounts during application season for this reason. I have no idea if adcoms look at that kind of stuff or not to be honest. Some of them haven't heard anything and I got admitted. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary to hide my profile, although I am somewhat cautious as to what I put on there anyway. I have my profile set to where only friends can view it and I don't always confirm everyone. That said, it might look bad if I ignored a friend request from XX University Admissions Committee!!!

You can temporarily disable your facebook? That's awesome lol. How do you do that?

 

[FloatOn]

You can temporarily disable your facebook? That's awesome lol. How do you do that?

Account settings --> deactivate account

 

[awang54]

I don't know about adcoms, but I have read somewhere that almost 40% of employers these days will do a Google/FB/Twitter/whatever search on you, just to see what might come up. So I'd rather just err on the side of caution and not have anything with my name attached it floating around the interweb that could be seen as questionable

 

[Myuu]

Don't put anything online you don't want to be seen.

 

[Narmerguy]

I don't know about adcoms, but I have read somewhere that almost 40% of employers these days will do a Google/FB/Twitter/whatever search on you, just to see what might come up. So I'd rather just err on the side of caution and not have anything with my name attached it floating around the interweb that could be seen as questionable

This seems extremely lame to me. Let the person's work speak for them not their private business.

 

[wilsonlaguna]

I can't image they would have the time to. But if there is anyone who might check your myspace or facebook, I'm betting it's the interviewer. By the time applicants are weeded out to just the interviewees, there's only a few hundred left out of the initial thousands

 

[TooMuchResearch]

Don't put anything online you don't want to be seen.

Agreed. Consider the webternet a public space.

 

[45408]

This seems extremely lame to me. Let the person's work speak for them not their private business.

It's not private business if you're publishing it on the Internet. I'd say you should hide/delete all the big drunken bash photos, but you don't have to make it austere and boring.

Most adcoms aren't going to really take the time to search everyone's Facebook, but keep your privacy settings limited to only your friends.

 

[MrCheetah]

Greetings fine denizens of SDN!

I was actually just wondering if admissions committees would look applicants up on facebook, myspace, etc. I know this is probably a dumb, unfounded, irrational fear of mine, but I know people who have had others post fake facebook and myspace accounts up which essentially slandered their characters.

I was just wondering if this would be a type of tool that adcoms might utilize?

I apologize if I'm being overly paranoid here, I just feel like no matter what I do something is going to stop me from getting into med school, that it's just too good to be true...

YES! I know for a fact that the adcoms at my state school, at the very least, do look over your facebook profile. I've restricted access to everything on my account, even my picture, for the application season.

 

[jj6vcb]

I just changed my name on facebook to a nickname that doesn't look at all like my real name, but people still know me by. That way if anyone who matters searches my real name they'll get nothing

 

[onomatopoeias]

A student from one school I was accepted to added me on facebook and sent me a message saying that I was free to discuss questions about the school with her. The student must have had some position on the adcom, but I guess it was more of a recruitment tactic though. Anyways, my privacy settings only allow friends to see my whole profile.

So still be careful, because med schools understand that facebook is often the easiest way to contact students and/or see what the student is really about.!

 

[Procyon]

The pre-med adviser at my school sent out an e-mail earlier in the year saying that someone's Facebook resulted in them not being admitted to one school, so to be careful. He said adcoms pretty much always look.

 

[edfig99]

I've looked up applicant info online when interviewing. Not so much FB or Myspace...but if there are publications or abstracts listed, or someone mentions an activity that's pretty unusual, I will attempt to verify. I can recall several instances of other interviewers attempting to verify listed publications on an amcas appl.

agree with the others that have advised revising your privacy settings on social networking sites to avoid any issues.

we also lurk and occassionally post on sites like sdn as well.

 

[Daedra22]

Places like Facebook are increasingly used in the professional world to communicate, and to evaluate people. I have no idea of adcoms look at facebook/myspace, but I for one never put something out in public that I would be ashamed of. You never know where that stuff could end up.

Also, it's better never to post any bad photos, even if you delete them. A very determined person could still find them... yay for google and their multiple copies of the internet.

 

[7starmantis]

Adcoms frequent SDN for sure and put together who you are. True story, happened to me (was actually pretty funny). Search SDN for the thread, its out there. That being said, who cares? What are you putting online thats so bad? If you are yourself in your application your FB shouldn't change their mind. I dont think adcoms reject people for going to parties or anything. If your posting pictures of you doing drugs, while having sex with hookers, and looking at child porn, maybe you shouldn't be doing that stuff or at least posting it online anyway.

I've known people who change their names or whatever on FB, I think its silly. If there is a school that doesn't want me because of who I am, I dont want to go to that school.

 

[Old Grunt]

This seems extremely lame to me. Let the person's work speak for them not their private business.

It is lame, but it is the reality of the situation. We just had a grand rounds on the topic. The moral of the story is keep your profile private (and watch what groups you join since anyone can see them).

 

[username456789]

This seems extremely lame to me. Let the person's work speak for them not their private business.

As others have pointed out, how is attention-whoring your social life on a public website in any way construed as "private business"?

FWIW, I have friends who are student members of the admissions committee, and facebooking upcoming interviewees is one of the first things they do.

 

[ak21]

Adcoms frequent SDN for sure and put together who you are. True story, happened to me (was actually pretty funny). Search SDN for the thread, its out there. That being said, who cares? What are you putting online thats so bad? If you are yourself in your application your FB shouldn't change their mind. I dont think adcoms reject people for going to parties or anything. If your posting pictures of you doing drugs, while having sex with hookers, and looking at child porn, maybe you shouldn't be doing that stuff or at least posting it online anyway.

I've known people who change their names or whatever on FB, I think its silly. If there is a school that doesn't want me because of who I am, I dont want to go to that school.

how do they find out who you are?

 

[VTBuc]

If you want to get REALLY paranoid think about how easy it is for someone else to remove you from waitlists at medical schools.

 

[7starmantis]

how do they find out who you are?

Its pretty easy if you stay up on SDN. People post where they were accepted, rejected, interviewed, how they ranked schools, etc. I just had a signature that had my med school in it and they put it together from my posts about withdrawing from their school. Its not all that difficult. Again, I dont see the big deal, but thats my experience with it.

 

[Wolfman89]

I would just be smart about what I put on social network sites. No excessively drunk pics. Nothing with you and booze before you turn 21. Nothing of you doing anything illegal or that shows bad judgement. Check your fan pages and groups regularly to make sure you aren't part of any super offensive groups or ones that make you look stupid.

 

[Arjuna]

Greetings fine denizens of SDN!

I was actually just wondering if admissions committees would look applicants up on facebook, myspace, etc. I know this is probably a dumb, unfounded, irrational fear of mine, but I know people who have had others post fake facebook and myspace accounts up which essentially slandered their characters.

I was just wondering if this would be a type of tool that adcoms might utilize?

I apologize if I'm being overly paranoid here, I just feel like no matter what I do something is going to stop me from getting into med school, that it's just too good to be true...

Just DE-activate, duh!

 

[UnfeatyOblation]

Thats why they have a link that says "Edit Privacy Settings"

 

[loljkttyl]

I'm a fourth year medical student on my school's ADCOM, and I facebooked all the applications I screened for any red flags. I didn't receive specific instructions from anyone, but I did it just for kicks and because I use facebook myself

 

[JJMrK]

Couple things you can do:
1) Change the setting that allows your profile to be searched by google.
2) Make everything private, including your friends list.

 

[texandoctobe]

.

 

[MilkmanAl]

Our assistant admissions director is on Facebook. They're definitely out there in case all of the other posts didn't convince you of that fact.

 

[Cybii]

What I would be scared about is adcoms googling applicants. If they googled me, the first thing that would pop up would be some weird meme I did on livejournal when I was 15 or 16... and I deleted that account years ago. yeaaaa... embarrassing.

 

[He2]

do you think adcoms every make mistakes on searches? e.g. if you search my name, it comes up with someone else, but it could be confused (if i had to really think about it) with me....

 

[schrizto]

do you think adcoms every make mistakes on searches? e.g. if you search my name, it comes up with someone else, but it could be confused (if i had to really think about it) with me....

Yeah, I've googled myself before and weird people with the same name and about the same age have popped up. It's annoying because I don't want them to be mistaken as me. Grr generic asian names .