MBA Program Applicants, Beware of Your Facebook Profiles

It has been going around for quite sometime but maybe not everyone who plans to earn MBA degree in the future is aware of it: your Facbook profile matters. This is especially true with top business schools who, in their admissions committee, have some surveyors that might check into a candidate’s Facebook page.

Some directors from different universities have confirmed this recent strategy used in filtering applicants. Consuela Knox of Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University states that “Facebook can help us gauge someone’s personality and interests, and we use it to help determine fit.” The director of Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts, Nora Ganim Barnes, found in her study that 21% of colleges recruit prospects and gather information about them by using social networking sites. She says, “No one wants to be on the front page of the newspaper for giving a scholarship to a murderer,” she says. “Everybody is trying to protect their brands.”

What’s more, the search is not limited to Facebook or social network sites only. Blogs, forums, and even media sites—no stones left unturned—may also serve as information sources for business school or universities. Thomas Griffin, director of undergraduate admissions at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, says the school searches through the Internet, including Facebook and other sites, to see whether an applicant raises "red flags."

Some might denounce this but those schools and universities claim that they need to maintain their standards and thereby have to find the most suitable applicants. So, what should be done by those who interest in applying for MBA study program, or any program for that matter? Keep your accounts and profiles professional! Or at least appropriate. Not just on Facebook, Twitter, or any social networking sites, but other such as blog and media site also. If you think that will confine your Internet experience, well, this is not an encouragement but you can always make as many pseudonymous accounts as you like and under that “names” you can pretty much say or do anything as you like.

Source:
- online.wsj.com
- www.huffingtonpost.com
- businessweek.com