Facebook/Myspace

[JOKeefe10]

Is is crucial to keep alcohol and partying out of my pics? Will med schools actually come look at that kind of stuff. I have it to where nobody can see my pics unless I accept them as a friend but is that still too risky?

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[armybound]

are you 21?

 

[maestro1625]

got into med school with a pic of me drinking vodka from a watermellon. But be smart. Dont put stupid stuff as your primary pic and limit tagged/posted photos to friends.

 

[jochi1543]

Just don't put one of them as your profile pic, and you should be fine - they won't see anything besides the profile pic if they are not in your network. Hence, make sure you are not in some network like NYC, where there's like half a million people who can see your stuff. Keep it limited to your college network.

 

[Critical Mass]

My myspace is not listed under my name, and only my friends can see my page. My facebook is pretty much walled off.

I'm not worried about embarrassing pics, but I wouldn't put anything on there that you're not willing to have a conversation about with somebody important. Just my .02.

And yes, admins do look at that stuff where I go to school. They may not be able to hold you accountable for anything on there, but it does give them something to think about when it comes time for MSPE's to be written.

My view: unless you are the class president or are known for being one of the best students, it is best for the admins to not know who you are.

 

[Law2Doc]

Is is crucial to keep alcohol and partying out of my pics? Will med schools actually come look at that kind of stuff. I have it to where nobody can see my pics unless I accept them as a friend but is that still too risky?

While most clinician interviewers and deans have too much else to do than check out folks on myspace/facebook it is not all that uncommon for a curious student interviewer or admissions staffer to see what they can find on the net about an applicant. In general, you ought to be willing to stand behind anything you put out on the net.

 

[SirTony76]

What if you picture is actually not a picture of you but a picture of Keith Richards?

 

[SketchLazy]

What if you picture is actually not a picture of you but a picture of Keith Richards?

In which case, they'll have no choice but to accept you.

 

[Law2Doc]

In which case, they'll have no choice but to accept you.

But don't expect any financial aid.

 

[kdburton]

Is is crucial to keep alcohol and partying out of my pics? Will med schools actually come look at that kind of stuff. I have it to where nobody can see my pics unless I accept them as a friend but is that still too risky?

You can set your profiles on both websites to private so that only friends can see your pics/profile. On facebook (maybe myspace?) you can also set it so that your name won't come up in a search - that way no one can see your profile pic even. Or you could just set your profile to private and only put tasteful pics up for your profile

 

[realitybias]

The internet is a powerful POWERFUL thing. Be careful what you say on SDN, on facebook, and be careful with your virtual datatrail. I've done reasonably well keeping my virtual datatrail clean, and my name is somewhat hard to find (and within the next few weeks, impossible). Its just good net practice to do so.

 

[jochi1543]

only put tasteful pics up for your profile

Well, gee, couldn't possibly do THAT! What is this, Nazi Germany? What's next, they're gonna make us all wear suits to interviews? Oh wait, nevermind...

 

[kdburton]

The internet is a powerful POWERFUL thing. Be careful what you say on SDN, on facebook, and be careful with your virtual datatrail. I've done reasonably well keeping my virtual datatrail clean, and my name is somewhat hard to find (and within the next few weeks, impossible). Its just good net practice to do so.

Are you getting married or something?

 

[SupernovaNights]

Haha. I've heard storied of people getting rejected by employers from their same social network. Just keep your profile private, as has already been mentioned.

 

[realitybias]

Are you getting married or something?

Nah. I'm already married. The thing about the few weeks is that I have told a few sites to remove my name connected to this username, just as a precaution.

 

[LifetimeDoc]

So pics like these are a No No?

 

[SunshineNYC]

I don't think anyone should have those pictures on the internet at all. Employers look at it for sure, and I bet adcoms do too. Even if it's private to your friends only, wouldn't you prefer your friends and family see you in your best light and not while you're puking on the floor or drunk off your ass. That's just my opinion. It's a public viewing of your life and so represent yourself as smart, interesting, and as someone to be respected. I just think that advice applied in general, not just for the purpose of getting into medical school.

 

[scrubsaresexy]

Yeah, I loved having fun drinking pictures of me online, but then I applied to be an RA at my school, so I thought it would be wise to untag pictures. If you're really that attached to the pictures, save them on your hard drive, but I would suggest untagging and removing anything that you don't want to have to explain to possible future employers. For example, the halloween picture of me all but passed out in a chair with my friend holding a sword up to my neck after 3 shots of tequila and two double Jaegerbombs...don't want to have to explain that!

 

[SunshineNYC]

After reading through this thread and especially the last comment I realized that there may be some sort of generation gap in how people view inappropriate pictures online. To young people who grew up with the internet and regularly use friendship networks to stay connected and share their experiences with their friends, it seems only natural to have pictures of your life and drunken escapades online. However, people of an older generation, who do not use the internet for these purposes find it horrifying and ridiculous and very irresponsible to put inappropriate pictures of oneself in such a public forum. To them it is like putting a picture of yourself drunk or half naked in the middle of Time's Square for everyone to see. You think that only your friends are looking because who else would care, but that's not the point. It's also not the point that you get drunk or not. What is really offensive is that you have chosen to place the evidence of your questionable moral behavior, behavior you might not want your grandma to see, in a public forum. For those of us who didn't "grow up with it" as an extension of ourselves it really seems crazy and stupid to put such pictures online. I was always taught to keep some things private, and that means NOT on the internet. If you do drugs, get drunk, dress provocatively, then fine, do that in your spare time, but don't celebrate it on the internet for everyone to see, it attracts negative attention to yourself and might detract from the more positive things that you do in your life... and those are the things that you should be celebrating.

Sorry to sound like I'm giving a lecture, but I'm just trying to help you see how an adcom might view it and what the issues are. Hopefully it will help some of you avoid being passed up because of what you had put on the internet.

 

[Tired Pigeon]

Sure, it may never come back to haunt you, but on the off chance it does -- well, wouldn't it suck to lose out on a coveted residency spot because you're "The guy on Myspace passed out in the gutter"? Or how about having your dean sit down to write your MSPE and his first thought is, "Oh yes, this is the girl who posted her wet t-shirt contest photos from spring break!"

It's not that deans and PDs are anti-fun or out to judge you for getting drunk during your college days. They had fun in their day, too. However, posting this kind of stuff about yourself on the internet creates the impression that you lack good judgment. Needless to say, this is NOT the way you want to be known.

Your electronic trail is forever. Don't post anything you'd be uncomfortable explaining if it appeared on the front page of your school newspaper.

 

[doinmybest5840]

After reading through this thread and especially the last comment I realized that there may be some sort of generation gap in how people view inappropriate pictures online. To young people who grew up with the internet and regularly use friendship networks to stay connected and share their experiences with their friends, it seems only natural to have pictures of your life and drunken escapades online. However, people of an older generation, who do not use the internet for these purposes find it horrifying and ridiculous and very irresponsible to put inappropriate pictures of oneself in such a public forum. To them it is like putting a picture of yourself drunk or half naked in the middle of Time's Square for everyone to see. You think that only your friends are looking because who else would care, but that's not the point. It's also not the point that you get drunk or not. What is really offensive is that you have chosen to place the evidence of your questionable moral behavior, behavior you might not want your grandma to see, in a public forum. For those of us who didn't "grow up with it" as an extension of ourselves it really seems crazy and stupid to put such pictures online. I was always taught to keep some things private, and that means NOT on the internet. If you do drugs, get drunk, dress provocatively, then fine, do that in your spare time, but don't celebrate it on the internet for everyone to see, it attracts negative attention to yourself and might detract from the more positive things that you do in your life... and those are the things that you should be celebrating.

Sorry to sound like I'm giving a lecture, but I'm just trying to help you see how an adcom might view it and what the issues are. Hopefully it will help some of you avoid being passed up because of what you had put on the internet.

I totally agree with this comment, and I am a young person (22)! I have a facebook profile, and I have pictures up, but there are none of me dressed inappropriately or making an ass out of myself. Of course, this is because I don't dress provocatively and I choose not to drink more than 1 or 2 drinks in a sitting, but still. I locked my profile to friends only for the duration of the application cycle, but that's because I don't feel it is the adcom members' business what I put up there, whether it's inappropriate or not. So they can see my name/year/major and a thumbnail of my picture (it's just me playing pool), but that's it. And that's the way I like it.

Also, being the paranoid person I sometimes am, I googled myself to make sure nothing embarrassing came up, and removed my name from anything that could possibly be misinterpreted (online journals, for example).

Wow, I ramble on a lot. All I really wanted to say was that I am sometimes surprised that some people are so bold as to post the pictures and information they do online. Like you said, people think only their friends will look, but that is not always the case. There are some crazy people on the internet.

 

[pmdc222]

I think it is becoming more popular for employers etc to go to the internet to find out information about people and to make sure they are appropriate. A friend of mine went to work at a fire department and the chief had printed out his myspace page. You become a representative of the company, medical school, residency, hospital, etc. To an extent, its your right to post pictures and statements, but its probably advisable to just set your profile to private.

 

[little pebble]

Also, being the paranoid person I sometimes am, I googled myself to make sure nothing embarrassing came up, and removed my name from anything that could possibly be misinterpreted (online journals, for example).

So, is there anyway to Google yourself if you have a really common name?

 

[doinmybest5840]

So, is there anyway to Google yourself if you have a really common name?

Put your full name: first, middle, and last. That will narrow down the search. Also try combinations of your first and middle or middle and last names. That's what I did. My first name is an uncommon spelling of a not-too-popular name, though, so when I searched very little came up.

 

[RollWave11]

This is why I love having a name so generic that noone could really find anything about me...no matter what they searched it'd take a while

 

[doinmybest5840]

This is why I love having a name so generic that noone could really find anything about me...no matter what they searched it'd take a while

Yeah, I just thought of that, which is lucky for someone with a generic name. Luckily, even though my name is somewhat uncommon, only one thing came up that actually referred to me, and it was just a link to one of those stupid honors sites that I paid to join, only to realize later that it was worthless.

 

[lilnoelle]

I'm not to concerned about such things and am pretty much open as to who I am and what I do on my various webpages, but there is very little about who I am and what I do that I would hide from anyone. Those things that I don't want people to know are things that my hubby and best friends don't even know. The rest is fair game to the world... (although I'm not going to talk about inappropriate things in inappropriate times)

In other words, I take it even farther than the above posters suggest. I not only don't post anything I wouldn't want to be well known, but I try not to do anything that I don't want to be well known.

 

[scrubsaresexy]

After reading through this thread and especially the last comment I realized that there may be some sort of generation gap in how people view inappropriate pictures online. To young people who grew up with the internet and regularly use friendship networks to stay connected and share their experiences with their friends, it seems only natural to have pictures of your life and drunken escapades online. However, people of an older generation, who do not use the internet for these purposes find it horrifying and ridiculous and very irresponsible to put inappropriate pictures of oneself in such a public forum. To them it is like putting a picture of yourself drunk or half naked in the middle of Time's Square for everyone to see. You think that only your friends are looking because who else would care, but that's not the point. It's also not the point that you get drunk or not. What is really offensive is that you have chosen to place the evidence of your questionable moral behavior, behavior you might not want your grandma to see, in a public forum. For those of us who didn't "grow up with it" as an extension of ourselves it really seems crazy and stupid to put such pictures online. I was always taught to keep some things private, and that means NOT on the internet. If you do drugs, get drunk, dress provocatively, then fine, do that in your spare time, but don't celebrate it on the internet for everyone to see, it attracts negative attention to yourself and might detract from the more positive things that you do in your life... and those are the things that you should be celebrating.

Sorry to sound like I'm giving a lecture, but I'm just trying to help you see how an adcom might view it and what the issues are. Hopefully it will help some of you avoid being passed up because of what you had put on the internet.

I think it's funny...I only put that last part of my comment up because I knew it spark a lecture...and it did! You guys (meaning SDN-ers on a whole) are so predictable, it's quite funny. But, to each his own! I personally think that life it too short to be incredibly concerned about how I 'celebrate,' so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, but I know there are a lot of people who are against drinking, etc, and I respect that.

"questionable moral behavior"...if having a few drinks is "questionable moral behavior," well okay, but I do think that's a little strong. I'm not getting behind the wheel of a car, selling my body, or clubbing baby seals. But anyway, I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "public forum," but facebook can be highly regulated as to who can see your pictures, so it's not exactly the same as posting your drunk half-naked pictures all over the internet for the world to see.

And for the record...what I said I did is an over-dramatization of what happened...because I like to be an instigator...
Cheers!

 

[Law2Doc]

This is why I love having a name so generic that noone could really find anything about me...no matter what they searched it'd take a while

You probably get blamed for other people's facebooks though. Who knows how many interviews you didn't get because they thought you were the "John Smith" who was posing stoned naked with farm animals.

 

[71263]

A close friend of mine put up pictures of his from when he went to a Gangsta Party, on his facebook and his photo blog. That weekend, somebody had anonymously downloaded the pictures, made a poster, and put it up at his school. For the next couple of weeks, there was a big rift between students who accused him and the party goers of racism, and alot of anger that went down. The situation eventually blew over, but there was quite a bitter aftertaste.

Im not going to say whether my friend was right or wrong, or if the accusers were justified. He had just done what he did when he went to ANY party (take pictures and post them up). Unfortunately, this one happened to rub people the wrong way. Fortunately, he didnt suffer any negative repercussions, other than being ostracized by angry students for a week or so.

My point is, you never know what might rub people the wrong way. If you think something might be iffy, better not to take the chance.

 

[RollWave11]

You probably get blamed for other people's facebooks though. Who knows how many interviews you didn't get because they thought you were the "John Smith" who was posing stoned naked with farm animals.

Thankfully none of the ones at my universities are dinguses We're good people