Should medical schools know your commonly used email address?

[PD187540]

I'm sure all of you have heard about incidents where people were fired from their jobs because of stuff they posted on Facebook or things that came up on a Google search.

Let's say you Google your primary email address, and you notice that certain things come up like forum posts. Let's also say that the nature of those posts can reveal your true beliefs about certain hot-blooded issues or the "darker sides" of your personality that may not agree with the ideals or tenets of medicine.

It's true that I have a very paranoid type of mind, so if you give out your primary email address to medical schools on your application, would they actually google it and read what comes up? I'm going to guess that YES, there's a high probability that that could happen. Imagine somebody being rejected from a medical school because of that!! That's gotta be grounds for a major lawsuit ("internet discrimination" or something like that).

As a result, I really think that for medical school application purposes, you should create a totally new e-mail address and use that solely for medical school purposes. Start off anonymous and only let them read your GPA, MCAT score, and what's in your resume...don't give them any information that can lead to an internet background search.

What do you think?

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[CaptainSSO]

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[Sammich117]

Depends on how much you want to hide. If there are things on the internet you don't want adcom's to see...then, sure. But I feel like it's better off to not have things end up on the internet that you're ashamed of in the first place.

Maybe if you're going into a forum and saying things you don't want to be linked to you, make a new email for that instead.

Or... just don't be two faced?

 

[Monocles]

Just use your .edu address. It looks so much more professional and plus you should be checking your school email frequently anyway. 😉

 

[GoSpursGo]

Unless you're saying you're going into medicine because you like stabbing things with scalpels, I struggle to think of something that would be bad enough for someone to have their acceptance rescinded. Med schools aren't naive enough to believe that their acceptees don't have cynical days.

That said, if you're worried about it by all means go ahead and make your online persona more anonymous.

 

[alienshards]

what, you don't already have a professional email and then a personal email?

What is this, 2005? sheesh.

(jk. But seriously, get a professional email. firstname.lastname@gmail, if available.)

 

[jhanago]

Just make a MED SCHOOL email address... last [email protected] then have all those emails forwarded to your personal email. That way med schools think they're sending it to a professional address and you dont have to check both emails

 

[NickNaylor]

I made a new e-mail address for the admissions cycle not because I wanted to make sure I was using an e-mail address that wouldn't be linked to anything unsavory, but because that way I knew that any e-mail I got from that address was something med school-related. It helped with the neuroticism.

But only a little bit.