Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.
These days, as social media pervades most of our lives, we need to take special care to keep our private lives just that—private! Our partners at Kaplan Test Prep found that 26% of college admissions officers check applicants’ Facebook profiles or other social networking pages to learn more about them—both the good and the bad. And although MBA admissions committees probably have better things to do than troll the Internet for your private information, you can never truly know whether an alumnus/alumna or a student interviewer will take a few minutes to find out a little more about you online.
Although your pages on these sites are likely innocuous, you must still ensure that access to those pages is limited so that you can control who sees them—and can thereby have more control over your interviewer’s perception of you. You do not want your interviewer’s first impression to be drawn from your vacation photos but rather from your confident demeanor as you walk in the door and shake his/her hand. So take a moment and make sure that only those you invite to your pages can use them to learn about you and your life.