UF was ranked ninth nationally for most influential colleges in social media by CollegeAtlas.org, the encyclopedia for higher education.
According to College Atlas’ website, UF ranks above Ivy League universities such as Princeton University, Brown University and Cornell University. No other Florida schools were in the top 30.
Andrew Selepak, director of the online master’s program with specialization in social media in UF’s College of Journalism and Communications, said he thinks social media is cyclical. First, the university shares information. Then, students share it with friends and parents.
The recent news of more night football games, for instance, was exciting to college students and easy to share, he said.
“How else would that have been shared 15, 20 years ago?” he said. “I could email somebody and say ‘Hey, guess what?’ but instead I just repost it, or I share it or tweet it, and everybody I know now has the same information.”
UF was assigned letter grades for five social media platforms. The university received A’s for Twitter, Google Plus and Instagram. UF’s Facebook page received a B ranking, and the LinkedIn account, with almost 186,000 connected alumni, received an A-.
Alina Avalos, a 19-year-old UF public relations junior, has noticed a shift toward more interaction with students by UF’s social media team.
“Well, what I thought was cool was when the incoming freshmen class for this year was announced … They would personally congratulate some of the people,” Avalos said.
She didn’t experience that when she was accepted as a freshman.
[A version of this story ran on page 5 on 6/5/2014 under the headline "UF scores high in social media"]
