Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.
These days, with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube penetrating most of our lives, we need to take special care to keep our private lives just that—private! Just last week, Kaplan Test Prep released the results of a survey that found that 24% of college admissions officers check applicants’ Facebook or other social networking pages to learn more about them—both the good and the bad. And although the 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 student interviewer has taken 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 they are private so only you can control your content—and thus your interviewer’s perception of you. You don’t 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 learn about you and your life through them.
