Googling applicants

[LilHouse]

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[nick_carraway]

I'm sure the younger members of the adcom might google people every now and then just for kicks. After all, don't you google people you know sometimes?

But I'm guessing that they'll look at your age at the time and find it more of a tidbit than something that will scuttle an application.

 

[RoadRunner17]

I'll say that it depends on what exactly the situation is about. But I won't pry much.

I'd bet that your student interviewers will google you, or find your facebook profile online. That's what I'd do if I was a student interviewer

 

[Zona Pellucida]

Lets just hope you have a fairly common name.

 

[Captain Fantastic]

So I know a girl who applied a few cycles ago (we worked together on a research project). She had an alcohol-related offense on her record, which she disclosed on her application and talked about how she had matured since then. An interviewer confronted her on the topic and, after she'd dug herself a nice hole, showed her the (recent) pictures he found of her on Facebook with EtOH in her hand. You probably can guess the rest of the story.

If it's something that has a good explanation and happened when you were much younger, you should be just fine. That being said, be ready for the question about it and tell the truth about the situation. Maybe it won't come up, but if it does you'll be ready for it.

 

[JustSomePreMed]

I'm pretty sure you can request that google remove specific sites from showing up when googling your name.

 

[ali20685]

So I know a girl who applied a few cycles ago (we worked together on a research project). She had an alcohol-related offense on her record, which she disclosed on her application and talked about how she had matured since then. An interviewer confronted her on the topic and, after she'd dug herself a nice hole, showed her the (recent) pictures he found of her on Facebook with EtOH in her hand. You probably can guess the rest of the story. QUOTE]


That just seems stupid to post things on your myspace page that can be so damaging. I know that most schools will tell you to make sure any pages like myspace and facebook should be kept clean. When I went to school for teaching, the head of the ed dept. told EVERYONE to delete their myspace pages immediately because employers as well as cooperating teachers may google or use another search engine to get information on you as a person. I would imagine that some med. schools or employers may do the same depending on the school.

Anyway, I am sure as long as you have a reasoning behind what happened or a way to shine a better light on yourself, you should be fine. Since it was so long ago, maybe there are ways to plug volunteering and such to show how much you have changed/ matured, if necessary. You won't really know until you apply. Good Luck!!

 

[nick_carraway]

I'm pretty sure you can request that google remove specific sites from showing up when googling your name.

Your request does nothing!* Google robots just laugh and continue to parse the digital world as they deem fit.


* Really.

 

[binko]

I made a point of making a lot of websites and profiles that I keep updated with info that I think will be favorable for me. Not that I have a lot of crap on the internet to hide, but if I make a cool thing out of molecular models or something I feel like an adcom might think that was funny and nerdy and possibly think well of me for it if they saw it, so I stick it on Facebook. And any pictures that someone else put up, where I look like a *****, I just un-tag myself.

 

[JeetKuneDo]

Easy solution for facebook, either make your profile blocked, so they can only see that little picture of you, or you can make your profile unsearchable.

 

[binko]

Easy solution for facebook, either make your profile blocked, so they can only see that little picture of you, or you can make your profile unsearchable.

They can still see photos of you if you're tagged and someone else uploaded the photos and made them public.

I recommend perusing Facebook weekly to untag all unsavory photos of yourself, unless you're like me and all the photos taken of you in the last six months involve either MCAT prep materials or your molecular models.

 

[phospho]

that's funny... a few years ago, i had a small accident... it was a fender bender. Either way, it was my fault, and I got the ticket. Turns out that it's not a regular ticket since there was an accident, which means that I can't just send a check in the mail, I would have to go to court.

So, I go to court, and tell the judge what happened and that I'm guilty, and that i'd like to pay my ticket. He says cool, but you'd have to come again to court to prove that the lady you hit was fully compensated. I told him that the lady was ALREADY compensated as we're speaking. I even offered to call her in front of him. I had already missed a day of class for this crap, and I didn't one to miss another one.

He didn't let me call the lady in front of him. I told him that his court system is the most inefficient system I have ever seen in my life (I still can't believe I said that or that he didn't find me in "contempt"). He yelled at me and told me to shutup and sit down, which I did. After he scheduled the next court date for me, as I was leaving, there were a bunch of reporters sitting in the back recording everything.

Next day, I open the paper, flip a few pages, and there I was, standing in front of the judge. The article's title was "college student frustrated with the new traffic system" (it was a new law that required you to come to court twice if you're involved in an accident and it's your fault).

Now, every time you google my name, the VERY first website you get is a link to that article! haha

dam, that was long... sorry, i was bored...

 

[bozz]

that's funny... a few years ago, i had a small accident... it was a fender bender. Either way, it was my fault, and I got the ticket. Turns out that it's not a regular ticket since there was an accident, which means that I can't just send a check in the mail, I would have to go to court.

So, I go to court, and tell the judge what happened and that I'm guilty, and that i'd like to pay my ticket. He says cool, but you'd have to come again to court to prove that the lady you hit was fully compensated. I told him that the lady was ALREADY compensated as we're speaking. I even offered to call her in front of him. I had already missed a day of class for this crap, and I didn't one to miss another one.

He didn't let me call the lady in front of him. I told him that his court system is the most inefficient system I have ever seen in my life (I still can't believe I said that or that he didn't find me in "contempt"). He yelled at me and told me to shutup and sit down, which I did. After he scheduled the next court date for me, as I was leaving, there were a bunch of reporters sitting in the back recording everything.

Next day, I open the paper, flip a few pages, and there I was, standing in front of the judge. The article's title was "college student frustrated with the new traffic system" (it was a new law that required you to come to court twice if you're involved in an accident and it's your fault).

Now, every time you google my name, the VERY first website you get is a link to that article! haha

dam, that was long... sorry, i was bored...

I know your name now from the info you have given.. 😀

 

[pietachok]

Unless you are like me (crazy parents thinking out of the box)...
...you most likely have many people who share the same name.

While it seems so obvious TO YOU that the article is about you, w/out a picture or futher identifying info, it's likely that it's not so obvious to someone else 🙂 Interviewers often don't have demographic info from your app to keep them from being biased, so they don't have some of the most useful info to match you up with a pictureless article.

That said, I've only known student interviewers to google an applicant. None of the medical profs I work with regularly google applicants (we've talked about this before)...if you work w/ medical professors, you'd be more comfy to know that some of them damn near need to be threatened by the school to turn in their post-interview assessment. Barring some quirky oddball, most profs won't find Googling worth their precious time.

I'll also point out that I know successful applicants (far more successful than I w/ regards to interviews/admissions) whose real names could be tied to the adult film industry. If anybody could be damned by Google but wasn't...

 

[sleepy12]

I know of a school that has people on the committee who are in charge of looking up websites for activities that people list. This is for making sure people didn't make up organizations or extracurriculars.

 

[chemnerd89]

I'm quoted in the local newspaper saying that I changed my major from film because I wanted to make some money one day. 🙁

I didn't actually say that. I basically agreed with a statement the reporter made and that turned into a "quote"