The University’s admissions offices for graduate and undergraduate programs should not use information gleaned from prospective students’ social media sites when considering applications.
While less than a handful of these sorts of incidences occur every year in the undergraduate arena, admissions offices should adopt a hands-off approach to applicants’ social media profiles.
Currently, the undergraduate admissions office considers information sent by anonymous tippers that has been posted on a prospective student’s social media site.
If this information is particularly troublesome, admissions officers provide prospective students the opportunity to explain themselves.
The admissions office deserves credit for not making monitoring social media a practice, like many universities across the nation have. But it should take this approach even further.
The purpose of the admissions application is to establish a common standard that can be used to assess all applicants.
The issue with using information from social media is not that it is a breach of privacy. The information posted on social media sites is public.
Rather, the issue lies in the fact that using information from social media sites for a few students is unfair to the entire admissions process. All applicants should all be judged by the same standard.
Moreover, the information on social media sites could introduce unnecessary bias that is more subjective to the particular admissions officer.
