On the other hand, Hechinger mentions that not everyone is comfortable with flipping through teenagers social pages. Also, a downside of this is that there are enormous amounts of high school seniors looking to apply to these top colleges, admissions can’t possibly go through all of them. It’s too time consuming. He later mentions that a senior in high school said “…colleges might look at his Facebook site but hopes admissions officers realize the postings reflect only a partial view of any student (Hechinger).”
The author includes some job applicants have learned the hard way that employers more times than not check social sites to weed out unwanted candidates. Students always have the option of changing their privacy settings, but even then information can leak. If a school gets anonymous tips about something posted on MySpace or Facebook then the schools will look into it. Colleges have been known to look up students who come up as “red flags.”
Hechinger uses Nora Ganim Barnes from Dartmouth University as a prime example of how social networking sites recruit information about students. She found that 21% of colleges use social-networking sites to recruit prospects as well as gathering information