Admissions officers at UF have not yet turned to social media accounts as a deciding factor in examining potential students.
Unlike UF, an increasing number of college admissions officers are considering the public posts from social media profiles of applicants fair game.
Students looking to get into these universities are cleaning up their profiles and monitoring the content they post, according to The New York Times.
“I believe that it is wrong for a college to base the admissions of students on social media,” said Kristina Mannus, a 19-year-old UF public relations sophomore. “It should be based on their academics and involvement in high school.”
The admissions process at UF is completed by a thorough review based on the information provided on the application, Andrea Felder, director of freshman and international admissions, wrote in an email.
Applications are designed to provide sufficient information for the admissions officers to make an appropriate decision on an applicant.
“We do not look up students’ social media pages because we do not believe it will add to the application,” she wrote.
Given the volume of applications UF receives as a public university, officers don’t have the time to take the extra step to look up students on social media, she wrote.
The practice of online searches occurs mostly at private liberal arts colleges, according to The New York Times.
“Unless students have strong security measures that block certain people from seeing their pages, I would still encourage students to be mindful of what they post on personal pages generally as the picture, post, thoughts, etc. may not be received well by others,” Felder wrote.
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 12/2/2014]
