Facebook & YouTube Play An Increasing Role in College Admissions

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece about how what you put on your Facebook profile may affect your ability to get into the university or college of your choice – see “Admissions 101: What About Facebook Excesses?”. 

Well, this very topic was the subject of a survey by Kaplan entitled the "Test Prep’s survey" that looked into the process of application reviews by admissions officers. According to Kaplan “The survey was conducted by phone in July and August 2011 as part of Kaplan Test Prep’s annual survey of admissions officers and includes responses from 359 of the nation’s top 500 colleges and universities, as compiled from U.S. News & World Report’s Ultimate College Guide and Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges. Among the colleges that participated were 38 of the top 50. The wording of some questions changed slightly from year to year.”

But what I thought was most interesting about this survey was that it not only warned of the pitfall of posting the wrong thing on Facebook, it also drew attention that social media profiles are also used by admissions for recruiting. It found that “Facebook and YouTube are increasingly important recruiting tools for colleges – 85% use Facebook (up from 82% in the 2010 survey) and 66% use YouTube (up from 52% in the 2010 survey) to vie for the interest of prospective students”. Sounds list these communication channels are going to be the vehicle of choice for admissions going forward - and that makes total sense if you think about the demographics of people who spend a lot of time on Facebook.

I guess these statistics make the top 5 tips I published on November 30, even more relevant.