Key Takeaways
- Most admissions officers say checking social media is fair game, but only a minority say they actually do it.
- When they do look, they are more likely to find something that hurts than something that helps.
- You do not need to scrub your accounts. You need to know what a stranger would see.
A student submits her application on a Friday night.
On Saturday morning she remembers a video she posted two years ago. It was a joke about a teacher. It got a lot of laughs at the time.
Would anyone at the college actually see that?
Probably not. But “probably not” is not the same as “no,” and the real answer is more interesting than either.
What the data says
Kaplan has surveyed college admissions officers about social media for years. Their 2023 survey, released in January 2024, found two numbers that don’t match.
Sixty-seven percent of admissions officers said looking at applicants’ social media is fair game. Only 28 percent said they had actually done it.
About a third (33 percent) said it is an invasion of privacy and shouldn’t be done.
So most admissions officers think it is allowed, and most have not done it. Kaplan points out that this gap is wide.
The share who look has moved around over time. Kaplan’s 2020 survey found 36 percent, and its 2021 survey found 27 percent. In the Kaplan surveys we found, it has never been a majority practice.
Why the minority matters
A low number does not mean no risk. It means the risk is uneven.
Kaplan has said that when admissions officers do visit applicants’ pages, they are much more likely to find something that hurts an applicant’s chances than something that helps.
Of the officers who said they check, 38 percent in the 2021 survey said what they found had a positive impact on a prospective student. That is not nothing, and it is a reminder that this can help too.
In earlier Kaplan research, officers described a few things that tend to prompt a look: a special talent the applicant mentioned, concerns about disciplinary or criminal issues, and tips from other people. Kaplan called the last one “admissions sabotage,” and noted that the evidence for it is anecdotal.
In other words, most students will never be looked up. The students who are tend to have given someone a reason.
What this looks like in practice
Take two students.
The first has a public account full of short, funny clips and a few angry posts from a bad week in ninth grade. Nothing illegal. Nothing the student thinks twice about.
The second runs a public channel where she posts her violin recordings and a weekly update on a local food drive she organizes. She put the link in her activities list.
The first student gains nothing from being found. The second gives a reader a reason to look and something worth seeing.
Same platforms. Very different outcomes if someone clicks.
If an admissions officer saw only my public accounts, would it match the student in my application?
What to actually do
- Search yourself. Look up your name and your usernames the way a stranger would, while logged out. What shows up is what can be found.
- Check what is public. Review the privacy settings on every account. Public posts, old comments, and tagged photos are visible even if you rarely look at them.
- Remove what you wouldn’t want read aloud. That means anything cruel, hateful, or about illegal activity. You don’t have to delete your personality, only the posts that could be read as a threat or a joke at someone’s expense.
- Don’t rewrite your whole history. An account that suddenly goes blank and a new one that looks too curated can raise more questions than a few harmless old posts.
- Link to the good stuff on purpose. If you have a portfolio, channel, or project that supports your application, put it where the application allows. An admissions officer only gets to see what you decide to show.
- Think about what others post. Tagged photos and group chats screenshotted by someone else are part of your footprint too.
What this comes down to
Most students will never have an admissions officer search for them. A few will, and they usually have given someone a reason.
The goal is not to have a spotless online life. It is to have nothing you would be surprised to hear read back to you, and to use what you have built when it supports your story.
If someone does look, you want them to find the same person they read about in your application
