Social Media in Admissions

Your online reputation matters in college admissions. And it matters even more in law school admissions!

Kaplan put together some data on social media in admissions. There’s nothing revolutionary in their data and nothing we haven’t written about before, but they do present it in an interesting way. According to their infographic, 41% of law school admissions officers acknowledge that they have at some point Googled an applicant. 27% of business school admissions officers admit to Googling applicants. While 20% of college admissions officers admit the same.

Meanwhile, 37% of law school admissions officers admit to having looked up an applicant on Facebook. 24% of business school admissions officers acknowledge the same, while the figure for college admissions officers is 22%. 32% of law school admissions officers claim they’ve found something in their searches that has negatively impacted a candidate. Of business school admissions officers, that statistic is 14%. And for college admissions officers, it’s 12%.

So if you’re applying to law school, definitely clean up your Facebook and Google search results. But that goes for business school and college applicants as well. Frankly, you should have a clean online reputation no matter where you’re applying because eventually you’re going to be applying for jobs. And when applying for jobs, employers Google. And Facebook. It is what it is. So clean up your mess if you’ve got one!

Check out this post on Social Media and College Admissions.