Thursday, September 18, 2008

Are we checking Facebook?

I addressed the Facebook/MySpace issue over two years ago on my old blog (here and here)...so long ago that one of the entries mentions that Facebook is only open to people with a .edu account and we all know that restriction went out the window quite some time ago.

With a new crop of students reading the blog, I think it helps to revisit this topic. Consider the situation in our office: we had 18,500 applications last year and will probably see a bump up in numbers due to our switch to the Common App. We have 15 full-time admission officers and 5-7 part-time staffers who come on board during reading season. Each application is read at least twice. That's a lot of work for a relatively small staff. We truly don't have time to google and search for every student who applies to UVa.

Now, I still think you should have your profiles set to private so only your friends can see them and even then I think you should consider how you'd feel if what you have on your profile was on the front page of the newspaper and edit accordingly.