You’ve heard the rumor: clean up your Facebook page because college admission’s officers look at them when deciding if you should be admitted to their school.  But is it really a rumor?  The short answer: no.

According to a 2011 Kaplan study, over 80% of college admissions counselors say they do look through their student’s social media pages when making the all-important admit decision.  When you see a figure like that, does it make you nervous?  Are you furiously thinking about any pictures and posts that may need to be deleted before you hit send on your college admissions application?

College admissions counselors do not have 3 hours to comb through each applicant’s Facebook or Twitter pages, but it is important that you take some steps to ensure that your social media sites are clean and send the right message about you.  Go through your pictures and remove “questionable” ones.  Not sure what “questionable” means?  If you don’t want grandma and grandpa seeing them, remove them.  Make sure the comments left on your wall are tasteful and cannot be misinterpreted.  You don’t have to list a bunch of interests that really don’t interest you at all, you just have to clean up what’s already there and make it appropriate for all viewers.  Want more tips to cleaning up your Facebook and other social media pages, read this recent article from Huffington Post.

Take the time to put you best Facebook foot forward,
Val