Do med schools look at your facebook profiles?

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MDROCKSTAR

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I've heard about people being rejected from jobs because of things employers found about job candidates on their facebook profiles. Do medical schools do this? I can just see the admissions committee having a laptop out, looking at applicants profiles and being like --this person is a party animal, I don't think he/she belongs at our school. It's improbable, but not impossible.

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I've heard about people being rejected from jobs because of things employers found about job candidates on their facebook profiles. Do medical schools do this? I can just see the admissions committee having a laptop out, looking at applicants profiles and being like --this person is a party animal, I don't think he/she belongs at our school. It's improbable, but not impossible.

That would be like saying the medical schools check SDN. i dont think they have the time. Id worry about it more when i am applying for a job
 
Do you really think they have time for this? Many schools are skimming your application as it is. The idea that they'd go out and do an exhaustive Interweb search on you is laughable.
 
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I'd say generally no, unless it's now under the purview of a background check.
 
If you have things on your Facebook page that make you so easily rejectable, maybe you should take them down regardless.

No ADCOM is going to say, "I see him legally drinking a beer in a pirate costume and he's happy about it, rejection!" But a pic of you in drag dry-humping a fire hydrant while being arrested by a stripper in a cop's uniform may alert them that you aren't going to be good for their public image.
 
Once you give everyone an interview, you only have a couple hundred apps left and they all probably aren't that different (what really is the difference between an applicant with an extra semester of volunteering or an increase of .05 gpa). It only takes a couple seconds to type in a name on facebook and see your profile picture is a wall full of empty beer cans!

Why not just make sure your facebook/voicemail/etc. are appropriate so you don't have to go crazy thinking about it
 
I dont think med schools have the time to check facebook. But I know that the director of admissions at yale has a facebook account. Dont believe me? Go ahead look him up....Richard Silverman.
 
I know that about 10 of my college professors have facebook accounts, pretty strange if you ask me.

I had a picture of my disgusting sprained ankle on my profile about 6 months ago, and my orgo teacher came up to me and said I saw your ankle on facebook, how are you holding up now??

weird lol
 
now that i think about, i dont find it that unlikely that a med school would pay someone to search all of the interviewees facebook profiles for red flags.......then again......why would a med school invest money into something like that?
 
Or how would a med school have access to profiles of students in different networks.

However, this IS done for recruiting in higher-$$ jobs out of college. You can tell a lot about whether or not you'd like to work with someone from their Facebook page.
 
I have a friend whose older brother deals with applicants to the CIA. They actually frown on you having a facebook/myspace account in the first place. Of course, maybe thats because they don't want you existing anymore.... In any case, they have to delete them upon being hired. Although medical schools do have their reputations to uphold, I bet they have a little less at stake than the Central Intelligence Agency!
 
I've definitely tried looking up my student interviewers on facebook, not to friend them but just out of curiosity to see what their pictures were and none of them had profiles. Coincidence? or am i just reaching......
 
I've definitely tried looking up my student interviewers on facebook, not to friend them but just out of curiosity to see what their pictures were and none of them had profiles. Coincidence? or am i just reaching......

i found them, mine but i couldnt access thier profiles.
 
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If you're worried about it you can set it so nobody can find your profile through a search.
 
If you have things on your Facebook page that make you so easily rejectable, maybe you should take them down regardless.

No ADCOM is going to say, "I see him legally drinking a beer in a pirate costume and he's happy about it, rejection!" But a pic of you in drag dry-humping a fire hydrant while being arrested by a stripper in a cop's uniform may alert them that you aren't going to be good for their public image.

I'm crying because i am laughing so hard!!
 
but they DO check SDN :)
Agreed. I had two schools specifically mention that they checked SDN. I doubt adcoms scour the site, but if you have a thread going about Acme University, odds are fair to good that folks in Acme University's admissions department will be reading it. It's a PR thing.
 
Agreed. I had two schools specifically mention that they checked SDN. I doubt adcoms scour the site, but if you have a thread going about Acme University, odds are fair to good that folks in Acme University's admissions department will be reading it. It's a PR thing.
so lets say an adcom member asks and SDN mod that goes to the school for someones email, will that SDN mod have access to give that out?
 
I have a friend whose older brother deals with applicants to the CIA. They actually frown on you having a facebook/myspace account in the first place. Of course, maybe thats because they don't want you existing anymore.... In any case, they have to delete them upon being hired. Although medical schools do have their reputations to uphold, I bet they have a little less at stake than the Central Intelligence Agency!

They also frown on employees giving away details about the hiring process. :)
 
so lets say an adcom member asks and SDN mod that goes to the school for someones email, will that SDN mod have access to give that out?
Don't use your "real" email address for such things. Use a junk mail address then forward that junk mail account to one you actually check. Not sure if the day-to-day admins can look up the IP address from which you post. If you're worried about it, there are ways to hide that as well (dig through my post history as it was recently discussed).

Logistics aside, it would be pretty crappy if SDN admins did this. Although you would probably never know about it.
 
so lets say an adcom member asks and SDN mod that goes to the school for someones email, will that SDN mod have access to give that out?

Short answer: No, they do not. :)

Longer answer: SDN's takes its privacy policy very seriously. Only very select personnel have access to identifying information (e-mail address, etc.). Even then, our policy states that we will not provide any user information to any third party for any reason except when compelled by a court of law.
 
I wouldn't have anything online-facebook, myspace, blogs, etc-that could be held against you. Definitely have the highest privacy settings on your facebook account.

And I know for certain that med schools look at this stuff. During an interview the interviewer asked me about SDN and if I read anything on it, because he looked at it. Being careful about stuff is being smart.
 
When I used to interview people for a job, I occasionally checked myspace if I thought twice about somebody. Sometimes I didn't like what I saw, for whatever reason. If I had doubts in any way, I usually just skipped over them for the hire because there were plenty more people for the position. Many who interview are taught that such sites are a tool, because people post stuff about themselves on the sites that they would never speak of at an interview. Granted, I was not interviewing for a medical school. But the same principles apply to all interviews.

Facebook and myspace profiles can be locked to users other than your friends. Just be smart and LOCK THEM. Then regardless of what you have on there you can rest assured that the admissions staff cannot see it.

And I have also heard at several of my interviews, from admissions staff, that many of them actually do read SDN. Probably not necessarily prowling for any one particular person, but still, as a rule of thumb don't do anything that is so flagrant and un-anonymous that it could hurt you.
 
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