Do schools actually google you

[ishiningstar]

I am really curious to know if med schools actually google your name to see what they can learn about you ? How often do they do that and would they do it before deciding to offer an interview or after the interview before making a decision .

I ask because I want to know if schools know something positive about me which I had left out in the application only because I felt it was not great enough to mention . I have had a pretty successful cycle and I want to know if that had anything to do with my success .

Thank you for your opinion !

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[mimelim]

I know of a couple of adcoms that google people they are about to interview, but they are certainly the minority.

Personally, we google/social media search all of our prospective residents that we interview, hard to imagine hiring someone without doing it to be honest.

 

[Mad Jack]

I am really curious to know if med schools actually google your name to see what they can learn about you ? How often do they do that and would they do it before deciding to offer an interview or after the interview before making a decision .

I ask because I want to know if schools know something positive about me which I had left out in the application only because I felt it was not great enough to mention . I have had a pretty successful cycle and I want to know if that had anything to do with my success .

Thank you for your opinion !

Depends on the age of the person reviewing your file. As their age approaches 30, the percent that will check your online presence rapidly gets closer to 100%.

 

[ishiningstar]

I know of a couple of adcoms that google people they are about to interview, but they are certainly the minority.

Personally, we google/social media search all of our prospective residents that we interview, hard to imagine hiring someone without doing it to be honest.

Interesting, so in that case it would happen once they decide to interview the person or after the interview itself .

 

[ishiningstar]

Depends on the age of the person reviewing your file. As their age approaches 30, the percent that will check your online presence rapidly gets closer to 100%.

You mean the younger the reviewers are the more they tend to do that ?

 

[Mad Jack]

You mean the younger the reviewers are the more they tend to do that ?

Yeah, pretty much.

 

[mimelim]

Interesting, so in that case it would happen once they decide to interview the person or after the interview itself .

Yes. Economy of effort.

 

[Goro]

Yes.

I am really curious to know if med schools actually google your name to see what they can learn about you ? How often do they do that and would they do it before deciding to offer an interview or after the interview before making a decision .

I ask because I want to know if schools know something positive about me which I had left out in the application only because I felt it was not great enough to mention . I have had a pretty successful cycle and I want to know if that had anything to do with my success .

Thank you for your opinion !

 

[ishiningstar]

Yes.

At what point in the application cycle would they typically do that though?

 

[Lawpy]

I know of a couple of adcoms that google people they are about to interview, but they are certainly the minority.

Personally, we google/social media search all of our prospective residents that we interview, hard to imagine hiring someone without doing it to be honest.

Depends on the age of the person reviewing your file. As their age approaches 30, the percent that will check your online presence rapidly gets closer to 100%.

Yes.

would be weird if adcoms also search SDN profiles to find out who applicants are

 

[Lost In Transcription]

would be weird if adcoms also search SDN profiles to find out who applicants are

With all my endeavor arguments in SPF I'd be screwed lol. Even as one of the leftues in there.

 

[Lawpy]

With all my endeavor arguments in SPF I'd be screwed lol. Even as one of the leftues in there.

lurkers can't see SPF/Lounge posts. and neither can noob accounts. it would take 100+ posts and probably some sustained membership on SDN on their part to find out. probably not worth the hassle at that point.

 

[Lost In Transcription]

lurkers can't see SPF/Lounge posts. and neither can noob accounts. it would take 100+ posts and probably some sustained membership on SDN on their part to find out. probably not worth the hassle at that point.

I know. But any regular on here can see and relay info.

Do you never hop over there? Don't.

 

[Mad Jack]

would be weird if adcoms also search SDN profiles to find out who applicants are

It happened once that a guy lost his acceptance because of SDN. And no, that isn't a joke.

 

[Lost In Transcription]

It happened once that a guy lost his acceptance because of SDN. And no, that isn't a joke.

Whoa! Deets?

 

[Beezlebub]

would be quite a shocker to find out someone was a convicted felon after being accepted.

thank you google!

 

[Mad Jack]

Whoa! Deets?

TheCatintheHat was an SDN poster that said some things post admission that I can't even remember anymore, had his admit pulled, then had to struggle to get another acceptance. He was saying some pretty egregious stuff though. @Goro probably remembers the story better than me.

 

[Beezlebub]

That's what the criminal background check does

yea ofc, but I was alluding to other aspects of the applicant that may/may not be pertinent to admissions decision in accepting/declining the prospective student.

it would be beneficial to confirm if an individual actually became world chess champion at age of 3 as per said his CV.

OR anything that was not disclosed during an interview.

I'm not on adcom- not that I would ever want to be (important position, but quite a hassle in my opinion)- but I suspect they would want to know as much about an applicant before admitting him to an institution where professionalism is of great importance. And google is only a click away!

Bottomline is don't post stupid, offensive stuff online where people can track you and hold you accountable. Bothersome to defend against a stupid comment you made during highschool.

 

[Mad Jack]

Some of the third-party, AMCAS-compliant intake/admissions software used by schools have configuration options that can automatically perform searches on google and background-specific functions (ie Spokeo) on applicants. With the DOB, Address, etc and all other personal info on your application, it would be easy to identify you. So from a technical standpoint, it can be done for all applicants. From a process standpoint, at most, it becomes another page in your admissions file and likely occasionally glanced at, and likely is barely noticed, if at all, by readers or interviewers.

It is more likely that the post-admission/pre-matriculation phase, where schools perform "due diligence" on acceptees, schools may actually read it for any possible discrepancies or other atypical info. I am not sure if any schools still ask/require for Facebook, Twitter, and other social media handles of acceptees. Perhaps 5-10 years ago, some schools where requiring login to social media as a condition of acceptance. There is dubious legal gray area on this as most state laws have a "character" or "morality" clause for physician licensing and that can apply to public image (same thing used to teachers). Would/should that apply to medical students? It is more likely to apply to residents who are actually employees providing direct patient care. Certainly the hierarchical nature of hospital staffing, professional societies, and specialty organizations, make social media much more "politically" sensitive.

Perhaps a good suggestion for acceptees is spend the summer prior to matriculation is to start "professionalizing" their social media

Actually looking at someone's page makes most sense post-interview, pre-offer. That's how we'd do it when hiring prior back in the day, anyway, as we'd get 100 applications per position, so pre-screening didn't make sense, and a good number of interviewees had questionable social media profiles, so offering them the job just to rescind it a third of the time would be both unnecessarily cruel and a pain in the ass. So we'd basically use social media as our final screen pre-hire. Sometimes we'd even like someone so much we'd overlook a questionable profile lol.

 

[gyngyn]

It happened once that a guy lost his acceptance because of SDN. And no, that isn't a joke.

It was his Facebook account that got him in trouble with his school...

 

[Mad Jack]

It was his Facebook account that got him in trouble with his school...

Ahhhh, that's right. It's been a few years lol, that was like, 2012.

 

[ScottTenorman54]

Whoa! Deets?

A lot of the old posts have been deleted, but here's some references to it:
https://forums.studentdoctor.net/th...rescinded-due-to-comments-made-on-sdn.966310/
https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/remember-remember-the-rescindence-of-november.1040802/
https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/public-apology.966423/

Sounds like some trainwreck of an applicant started ranting about AA with a bunch of racist comments all over Facebook and a couple other places and ended up getting his acceptance rescinded. He could have been a resident by now if he just kept his mouth shut. I wonder what he's been up to since then. Anyway, moral of the story was that yes, OP, school administrators are humans who have access to the internet like everyone else, so don't be dumb. But they're looking for egregious things that jump out, not small nuances like some EC you did that you didn't mention on your app, so I wouldn't count on it in your case.

 

[ishiningstar]

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/is-hiding-your-social-media-necessary.1195790/
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/thr...strong-applicant-in-your-experiences.1134926/
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/thr...hools-search-an-applicant-personally.1066684/
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/is-this-true-about-premed-forums.1198242/

Assume all social media may be searched and seen by Adcoms so always be professional. One of the admission directors at a particular school is doing her doctorate in social media and medical student selection. Some medical schools have added an internet background search step usually post-interview, per-selection as due diligence to find any obvious issue. With automation and some software this is easy to do

This is a much larger issue for medical residents in applicant selection with many medical specialty academies and GME (residency) programs issue guidelines and, in some cases, strict agreements on social media use while in a program. The reason for this has been patients and families have started to look up doctors who are treating them. A case then was a 3rd year peds residents was treating a young girl and the next day the parents came in screaming to take that doctor away from my daughter or I will sue. Turned out the parents were freaked about a photo from a drunken frat party taken some 10 years earlier was posted on a social media site with this doctor tagged. (I will find the original case report and add it).

In the meanwhile there have been a slew of studies done on this to the point that AAMC has guidelines for applicants (first in list)
https://www.aamc.org/students/aspiring/324178/socialmediadoesnthurt.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3758042/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23139411
http://www.amednews.com/article/20121127/profession/311279999/8/
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/731175
http://www.ojphi.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2161/2026
http://jepm.seahq.net/VolXVI_IssueV_McHugh.pdf[/QUOT

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/is-hiding-your-social-media-necessary.1195790/
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/thr...strong-applicant-in-your-experiences.1134926/
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/thr...hools-search-an-applicant-personally.1066684/
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/is-this-true-about-premed-forums.1198242/

Assume all social media may be searched and seen by Adcoms so always be professional. One of the admission directors at a particular school is doing her doctorate in social media and medical student selection. Some medical schools have added an internet background search step usually post-interview, per-selection as due diligence to find any obvious issue. With automation and some software this is easy to do

This is a much larger issue for medical residents in applicant selection with many medical specialty academies and GME (residency) programs issue guidelines and, in some cases, strict agreements on social media use while in a program. The reason for this has been patients and families have started to look up doctors who are treating them. A case then was a 3rd year peds residents was treating a young girl and the next day the parents came in screaming to take that doctor away from my daughter or I will sue. Turned out the parents were freaked about a photo from a drunken frat party taken some 10 years earlier was posted on a social media site with this doctor tagged. (I will find the original case report and add it).

In the meanwhile there have been a slew of studies done on this to the point that AAMC has guidelines for applicants (first in list)
https://www.aamc.org/students/aspiring/324178/socialmediadoesnthurt.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3758042/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23139411
http://www.amednews.com/article/20121127/profession/311279999/8/
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/731175
http://www.ojphi.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2161/2026
http://jepm.seahq.net/VolXVI_IssueV_McHugh.pdf

That's interesting, thanks for sharing!

 

[ishiningstar]

A lot of the old posts have been deleted, but here's some references to it:
https://forums.studentdoctor.net/th...rescinded-due-to-comments-made-on-sdn.966310/
https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/remember-remember-the-rescindence-of-november.1040802/
https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/public-apology.966423/

Sounds like some trainwreck of an applicant started ranting about AA with a bunch of racist comments all over Facebook and a couple other places and ended up getting his acceptance rescinded. He could have been a resident by now if he just kept his mouth shut. I wonder what he's been up to since then. Anyway, moral of the story was that yes, OP, school administrators are humans who have access to the internet like everyone else, so don't be dumb. But they're looking for egregious things that jump out, not small nuances like some EC you did that you didn't mention on your app, so I wouldn't count on it in your case.

Got it, I was actually asking because I might have something positive about me out there that I had not disclosed so I was just curious to see if it had helped my case.

 

[The Buff OP]

Yes.

Funny story time?

 

[Goro]

Nope. Just something we do. So take down that pic of you taking a hit on the bong, or your banging that guy or gal in Acapulco.

Funny story time?

 

[Beezlebub]

Nope. Just something we do. So take down that pic of you taking a hit on the bong, or your banging that guy or gal in Acapulco.

just a matter of formalities. adcoms know you're doing it but they need to catch you in the act to confirm and ruin your future. kind of like an overly attached girlfriend.

 

[Goro]

It's also more of the attitude that "if you're stupid enough to get caught, we don't want you as a student".

just a matter of formalities. adcoms know you're doing it but they need to catch you in the act to confirm and ruin your future. kind of like an overly attached girlfriend.

 

[Beezlebub]

It's also more of the attitude that "if you're stupid enough to get caught, we don't want you as a student".

 

[sammiesings]

Got it, I was actually asking because I might have something positive about me out there that I had not disclosed so I was just curious to see if it had helped my case.

Kinda doubt that. Unless it was something that if they googled your name they could find it on the first page. Also, it sounds like it's done only after you have an interview already if at all. Congrats on your success though!

 

[The Buff OP]

Nope. Just something we do. So take down that pic of you taking a hit on the bong, or your banging that guy or gal in Acapulco.

I'm clean. You will only find pics of my guns.

 

[ishiningstar]

Kinda doubt that. Unless it was something that if they googled your name they could find it on the first page. Also, it sounds like it's done only after you have an interview already if at all. Congrats on your success though!

I guess you are right , thank you !