Should I delete social media when applying?

[postponemastudentloan]

Hi guys,

I hope you all are staying safe & doing well. I wanted to get your opinion regarding social media when applying to med school. I don’t have anything bad on my social media that I can think of, but i have had my facebook since middle school (yikes lol). So I was wondering, would you guys suggest deleting social media before applying? Or changing my name, etc? I’m not sure how I’d “clean up” accounts that I’ve had for years.

I also dont know if cleaning up/deleting your social media is even a thing before applying, i just happened to be talking to someone who mentioned it and wanted to get your opinions!

thanks 🙂

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[LizzyM]

Some people I know use first and middle name, or a shortened version of their last name so that web crawlers are less likely to find them when they are "googled". Set your posts to Private and don't let anyone tag you in a picture without your approval. These are also settings on Facebook. Not sure about Insta' and twitter.

The ultra cautious will tell you to delete but where is the fun in that. Now more than ever, we need to stay in touch with the people we can't see in person and I find that social media is making that possible. (Seems my feed is full of engagements and new babies, what about you?)

 

[M&L]

Hi guys,

I hope you all are staying safe & doing well. I wanted to get your opinion regarding social media when applying to med school. I don’t have anything bad on my social media that I can think of, but i have had my facebook since middle school (yikes lol). So I was wondering, would you guys suggest deleting social media before applying? Or changing my name, etc? I’m not sure how I’d “clean up” accounts that I’ve had for years.

I also dont know if cleaning up/deleting your social media is even a thing before applying, i just happened to be talking to someone who mentioned it and wanted to get your opinions!

thanks 🙂

i was thinking about it too, but decided not to. The only thing someone would see on my facebook is pictures of cute animals, and "feel good" memes. Ask yourself, - if a potential pt saw this, would they still want you to be their doctor?

 

[Lifeblood_20]

1. I think the majority of Adcoms don't have the time/energy to go out of their way to social media search every applicant, even those who they recommend for interview/admissions. They only spend 10 minutes reading your application. Why would they care about your social media?
2. If they do, you can use that to your advantage by posting constructive material that helps them get to know you as a well-rounded person
3. It's just good practice to display professionalism at all times. Nothing you post online is truly anonymous. Doesn't mean you have to be a professional social media guru, but definitely be civil and mature, whether you upload professional or personal content

 

[LunaOri]

If you’ve been posting vile racist/sexist/bigoted stuff, yes you should delete.
(On the other hand, if you’re that hateful, you don’t belong in medical school anyway).
Adcoms aren’t going to go through your social media feeds, so there’s no need to stress about the usual foolishness. You’d only be in trouble if someone alerted them to a particular offensive/threatening/criminal post.

 

[Angus Avagadro]

Is there anything on your social media that will belp you? There have been cases of social media derailing careers. Has social media derailed any med school applications? I dont know.

 

[xffan624]

Is there anything on your social media that will belp you? There have been cases of social media derailing careers. Has social media derailed any med school applications? I dont know.

"Remember, remember the rescindment of November". IIRC, it was bigoted posts on Facebook made by an SDN poster that were forwarded by someone to an ADCOM (the poster had mentioned their acceptance). I'll see if I can find the thread.

ETA: Acceptance Offer RESCINDED Due to Comments Made on SDN

 

[LizzyM]

As I recall the story of the recinded offer from a DO school, the admitted applicant made some inappropriate remarks in a Facebook group associated with that school. There was no stalking of SDN necessary, the admitted student was quite easilly identified after he posted on that school-specific Facebook page.

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

Even if you delete posts, cached ones may show up if someone searches.

 

[deleted1063986]

A certain prolific SDN poster got their only acceptance rescinded at the end of the most recent (2019-2020) admissions cycle due to inappropriate posts on here and on premeddit (in addition to inappropriate actions taken outside of social media, but the official reason cited was actually due to extremely unprofessional behavior on SDN!).

You don't need to delete your Facebook account or whatever and I don't think anything you said in middle school will come back to haunt you unless it was absolutely egregious. It is, however, in everyone's best interest and good practice to maintain professionalism going forward.

 

[Med Ed]

Hi guys,

I hope you all are staying safe & doing well. I wanted to get your opinion regarding social media when applying to med school. I don’t have anything bad on my social media that I can think of, but i have had my facebook since middle school (yikes lol). So I was wondering, would you guys suggest deleting social media before applying? Or changing my name, etc? I’m not sure how I’d “clean up” accounts that I’ve had for years.

I also dont know if cleaning up/deleting your social media is even a thing before applying, i just happened to be talking to someone who mentioned it and wanted to get your opinions!

thanks 🙂

You should delete your social media regardless.

 

[deleted1027026]

A certain prolific SDN poster got their only acceptance rescinded at the end of the most recent (2019-2020) admissions cycle due to inappropriate posts on here and on premeddit (in addition to inappropriate actions taken outside of social media, but the official reason cited was actually due to extremely unprofessional behavior on SDN!).

You don't need to delete your Facebook account or whatever and I don't think anything you said in middle school will come back to haunt you unless it was absolutely egregious. It is, however, in everyone's best interest and good practice to maintain professionalism going forward.

How exactly was their identity figured out from anonymous message boards? Did they dox themselves for no reason?

 

[Goro]

How exactly was their identity figured out from anonymous message boards? Did they dox themselves for no reason?

You'd be surprised how many people leave identifying info in their SDN posts.

Not too long ago I received a frantic PM from a med student who had been complaining about their school, and the administration was able to pinpoint who they were.

Luckily, it was more of a "if you don't like it here, you can leave, so why don't you remove all those posts you made about us?" type of conversation they had with the student, but the implicit threat was there all the same.

I was curious about this and went back through the student's post history and sure enough, their schools was ID's and the student's stats were in the history as well. I advised said student to scrub all thier posts and leave SDN, and get a new handle.

Not mentioned above, if there's a pic of you taking a hit from a bong, or downing a bottle of scotch when you were 17, go delete them.

 

[DNAJB6]

You don't have to delete... make everything private and deactivate your accounts.

 

[DNAJB6]

A certain prolific SDN poster got their only acceptance rescinded at the end of the most recent (2019-2020) admissions cycle due to inappropriate posts on here and on premeddit (in addition to inappropriate actions taken outside of social media, but the official reason cited was actually due to extremely unprofessional behavior on SDN!).

You don't need to delete your Facebook account or whatever and I don't think anything you said in middle school will come back to haunt you unless it was absolutely egregious. It is, however, in everyone's best interest and good practice to maintain professionalism going forward.

Who? What was the post? Nothing on SDN seems that serious. I must have missed something.

 

[DNAJB6]

I think the real question is becoming, should we delete SDN and create a new account during app season?

 

[deleted1053887]

You should clean all your social media and make sure you have no postings with group pictures of all of you half naked drawing male genitalia on a passed out classmate or the frat party where you all chipped in for the stripper. Get rid of any pics showing weed, pot, piles of dirty laundry, unmade beds or bad interior design choices. Remove any postings with opinions on political and social issues, favorite sports teams, movies you detested, or what you prefer on pizza. Remove any poorly written and grammatically incorrect posts. You will have to take a chance on the Oxford comma. In fact, I would delete all your IDs including FaceBook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp. KIK. Yahoo, Youtube, MySpace, AOL, and Compuserve. Wipe your phone clean, smash it with a hammer, then drop it into a bag with some weights and throw into a lake or river. Better yet, make it salt water where it will corrode faster, thus insuring nothing can be retrieved. Get a dozen burner phones and only use them once, of course in code, then discard. Delete all your email accounts and consider communicating only by dead drop with one time pads. Stay only at cheap hotels for a single night and pay only with cash. And never trust the one eyed man in the red beret and green scarf who will have a checkered handkerchief square always in his left breast pocket. By ocean freighter make you way to the Cafe American in Casablanca. There at 8pm each evening, a short French man with a thin mustache will be at the very far right of the bar wearing a ring with the Lorraine Cross of DeGaulle will be found. You say to him “I hear the MCAT question 23 was misworded this cycle” and he will respond “Oh, you mean the Redux Reaction?” He will give you further instructions.

Haha, not gonna lie, you had me in the first half!

 

[dr_kateb]

A certain prolific SDN poster got their only acceptance rescinded at the end of the most recent (2019-2020) admissions cycle due to inappropriate posts on here and on premeddit (in addition to inappropriate actions taken outside of social media, but the official reason cited was actually due to extremely unprofessional behavior on SDN!).

Wait really? Was it that dr. patrick dude?

 

[MD Financial Services Scott]

I can't speak to med school but as we have new employee applicants we check social media and probably a full 1/3 get decline employment simply due to social media pictures of using drugs, passed out somewhere, and untold other inappropriate comments or pictures. We just don't want a problem employee and if someone is not sharp enough to clean that up when they are told "we are going to review all relevant material in a background check" then it probably is not a good fit.

 

[Jedi2100]

If you’ve been posting vile racist/sexist/bigoted stuff, yes you should delete.
(On the other hand, if you’re that hateful, you don’t belong in medical school anyway).
Adcoms aren’t going to go through your social media feeds, so there’s no need to stress about the usual foolishness. You’d only be in trouble if someone alerted them to a particular offensive/threatening/criminal post.

The problem is in what has been and is considered inflammatory, especially by ADCOMs who often have very different life experiences and perspectives compared to marginalized applicants, POC applicants, indigenous applicants and Black applicants. I mean a Black woman was expelled from her pharmacy program because she posted some body-positive song lyrics from her favorite artist on her semi-anonymous SoMe. Nothing about where she worked was even mentioned. Her private SoMe had nothing to do with her qualities as a professional but some people with a bone to pick decided to use her content against her. She never should have been removed in the first place.

Are they using the same energy to go after applicants who engage in hateful rhetoric?

 

[LunaOri]

The problem is in what has been and is considered inflammatory, especially by ADCOMs who often have very different life experiences and perspectives compared to marginalized applicants, POC applicants, indigenous applicants and Black applicants. I mean a Black woman was expelled from her pharmacy program because she posted some body-positive song lyrics from her favorite artist on her SoMe. Her private SoMe had nothing to do with her qualities as a professional but some people with a bone to pick decided to use her content against her. She never should have been removed in the first place.

Are they using the same energy to go after applicants who engage in hateful rhetoric?

Yes.

 

[YCAGA]

The problem is in what has been and is considered inflammatory, especially by ADCOMs who often have very different life experiences and perspectives compared to marginalized applicants, POC applicants, indigenous applicants and Black applicants. I mean a Black woman was expelled from her pharmacy program because she posted some body-positive song lyrics from her favorite artist on her SoMe. Her private SoMe had nothing to do with her qualities as a professional but some people with a bone to pick decided to use her content against her. She never should have been removed in the first place.

Are they using the same energy to go after applicants who engage in hateful rhetoric?

That is a grossly misleading summary of the situation, to the point of possibly mispresenting the facts in bad faith.

I would ask for mod approval to post screenshots from the official court filing, but I do not expect them to be approved because they are that bad. I am of the opinion that if it is germane to the conversation, and made its way into a federal court filing, it is okay to post on this forum, but I know vulgarity is normally not allowed on SDN. They are linked in the filling below on pages 12 and 13. In fact, now that I think more about it, I recommend not opening this court filing on a work or school computer that is monitored--that is the level of vulgarity we are talking about. The fact that I need to include this warning alone is why it is insane that @Jedi2100 has made it sound like the woman involved is a victim in any way.

Diei v. UTHSC - Complaint

www.thefire.org

Furthermore, she was not actually expelled as that was overturned during an internal appeal. She was also warned at least once by the professionalism committee about her conduct on social media, and expelled (but later reinstated) when she continued to post vulgar stuff on social media. From the very first warning, she repeatedly said she did not understand what was wrong with her posts, and said the school had to be more clear about what "line" she was crossing when they said her posts were crude and vulgar. Please go look at the posts in the court filing before you say the school should have been more clear.

The main issue that I have with her case is not that she posted sexual or crude stuff on social media, it is that she ignored the warning and then either played dumb or legitimately does not understand how her posts cross a line of what is considered unprofessional. If she cannot self-evaluate her actions and realize that her posts are considered vulgar to 99.9% of people, it is reasonable to have serious concerns about her ability to self-regulating her behavior with patients and coworkers. Like I said, she is either gaslighting admin by saying the line is not clear, or legitimately can't see the line, which is a problem in both cases.

If I was scrolling through social media and saw the face of the pharmacy or medical student who did an invasive physical exam or knew very personal details about me and I saw them saying the stuff she was saying, I would feel VERY uncomfortable and would never get medical care from that place again. It does not matter if they are a Black woman or a white man or any other combination of gender and race. Unfortunately, I do not think anyone would be upset if a male student got expelled for the same type of posts, because he would just be labeled as "creepy" and it would have been common sense that crude posts could make patients very uncomfortable. She has claimed that her posts should be allowed under the umbrella of "embracing female sexuality," and censoring her is sexist.

She also has an Onlyfans tied to her same username and is one of the top things on Google when you search for her Twitter. But that is a can of worms I won't touch with a 10,000 foot poll. At least that is behind a paywall, unlike a very public Twitter and Instagram feed.

 

[Goro]

The problem is in what has been and is considered inflammatory, especially by ADCOMs who often have very different life experiences and perspectives compared to marginalized applicants, POC applicants, indigenous applicants and Black applicants. I mean a Black woman was expelled from her pharmacy program because she posted some body-positive song lyrics from her favorite artist on her SoMe. Her private SoMe had nothing to do with her qualities as a professional but some people with a bone to pick decided to use her content against her. She never should have been removed in the first place.

Are they using the same energy to go after applicants who engage in hateful rhetoric?

I know of at least one SDNer who had his med school acceptance rescinded for posting racist comments in FB, and at least two med students who have been, or are facing suspensions or expulsion for racist comments on SM.

 

[Jedi2100]

Yes.

Except historically this has not been the case at all. That being said, I welcome the discussion on this.

 

[Goro]

Except historically this has not been the case at all. That being said, I welcome the discussion on this.

This is true, but irrelevant to the o p. Perhaps you can initiate a new discussion on this topic in the SPF?

 

[MarkDe]

You should clean all your social media and make sure you have no postings with group pictures of all of you half naked drawing male genitalia on a passed out classmate or the frat party where you all chipped in for the stripper. Get rid of any pics showing weed, pot, piles of dirty laundry, unmade beds or bad interior design choices. Remove any postings with opinions on political and social issues, favorite sports teams, movies you detested, or what you prefer on pizza. Remove any poorly written and grammatically incorrect posts. You will have to take a chance on the Oxford comma. In fact, I would delete all your IDs including FaceBook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp. KIK. Yahoo, Youtube, MySpace, AOL, and Compuserve. Wipe your phone clean, smash it with a hammer, then drop it into a bag with some weights and throw into a lake or river. Better yet, make it salt water where it will corrode faster, thus insuring nothing can be retrieved. Get a dozen burner phones and only use them once, of course in code, then discard. Delete all your email accounts and consider communicating only by dead drop with one time pads. Stay only at cheap hotels for a single night and pay only with cash. And never trust the one eyed man in the red beret and green scarf who will have a checkered handkerchief square always in his left breast pocket. By ocean freighter make you way to the Cafe American in Casablanca. If you don’t believe here, find more about social networks yourself. My eyes opened when I read this essay.There at 8pm each evening, a short French man with a thin mustache will be at the very far right of the bar wearing a ring with the Lorraine Cross of DeGaulle will be found. You say to him “I hear the MCAT question 23 was misworded this cycle” and he will respond “Oh, you mean the Redux Reaction?” He will give you further instructions.

You laugh, but sometimes it seems to me that it really has to be done.

 

[definitely_chondria]

Definitely keep your FB because you'll want to be added to the school-specific FB groups when you've been accepted!

 

[M&L]

would a workout outfit that shows a bit of skin (sports bra as top) count as inappropriate enough to delete?

no! you are fine.

things to delete POTENTIALLY - "party pictures" - you are obviously drunks, doing drugs, while dancing half naked on a bar; your stripper work related pictures; posts where you are acting racist, sexist or insulting towards any minorities (honestly hope you dont have them); other stuff that is controversial - like, you being against vaccines. Posts supporting sexual violence, etc.

Workout stuff is fine, day on a beach -you are in a bikini- is fine. Now, if the picture was taken in a sexually provocative style (if you are not sure - just PM me, i'll explain), then its a problem potentially. But if it is just a person wearing clothes that is appropriate to the environment - fine.

 

[M&L]

would a workout outfit that shows a bit of skin (sports bra as top) count as inappropriate enough to delete?

another way i like to think about it - would your conservative church going grandma be ok with the picture? than it ok (its a joke, of course, but actually, its a useful criteria).

 

[pinkpineapple0]

no! you are fine.

things to delete POTENTIALLY - "party pictures" - you are obviously drunks, doing drugs, while dancing half naked on a bar; your stripper work related pictures; posts where you are acting racist, sexist or insulting towards any minorities (honestly hope you dont have them); other stuff that is controversial - like, you being against vaccines. Posts supporting sexual violence, etc.

Workout stuff is fine, day on a beach -you are in a bikini- is fine. Now, if the picture was taken in a sexually provocative style (if you are not sure - just PM me, i'll explain), then its a problem potentially. But if it is just a person wearing clothes that is appropriate to the environment - fine.

okay, thank you! Yes of course, fortunately, I don't do any of those things. Thank you 🙂

 

[wondervisions]

You should just delete social media entirely