They Loved Your G.P.A. Then They Saw Your Tweets.
TechnophoriaNovember 12, 2013
别让Facebook毁了你的大学申请
科技2013年11月12日
John-Patrick Thomas
At Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me., admissions officers are still talking about the high school senior who attended a campus information session last year for prospective students. Throughout the presentation, she apparently posted disparaging comments on Twitter about her fellow attendees, repeatedly using a common expletive.
在缅因州布伦瑞克的鲍登学院(Bowdoin College)，招生人员至今还在谈论去年参加校园招生信息介绍会的一名高中毕业班学生。在整个陈述过程中，她一直在Twitter上发帖辱骂其他到会学生，并且多次使用一个常见的脏词。
Perhaps she hadn’t realized that colleges keep track of their social media mentions.
也许她还没有意识到，高校会查看他们在社交媒体上的表现。
“It was incredibly unusual and foolish of her to do that,” Scott A. Meiklejohn, Bowdoin’s dean of admissions and financial aid, told me last week. The college ultimately denied the student admission, he said, because her academic record wasn’t competitive. But had her credentials been better, those indiscreet posts could have scuttled her chances.
“她的做法是极其不寻常且十分愚蠢的，”鲍登学院的招生和财政援助主任斯科特·A·米克尔约翰(Scott A. Meiklejohn)上周告诉我。他说学院最终拒绝了她的入学申请，因为她在学业上成绩平平。但是，就算她的成绩比较好，那些轻率的帖子也可能会搞砸她的录取机会。
“We would have wondered about the judgment of someone who spends their time on their mobile phone and makes such awful remarks,” Mr. Meiklejohn said.
“如果一个人花时间在手机上如此出言不逊，我们难免会对他的判断力产生怀疑。“米克尔约翰说。
As certain high school seniors work meticulously this month to finish their early applications to colleges, some may not realize that comments they casually make online could negatively affect their prospects. In fact, new research from Kaplan Test Prep, the service owned by the Washington Post Company, suggests that online scrutiny of college hopefuls is growing.
本月，部分毕业班学生正在一丝不苟地准备自己的提前入学申请材料，有些人可能没有意识到，他们在网上随性发表的言论，可能会给自己的录取结果带来负面影响。华盛顿邮报公司(The Washington Post Company)下属“卡普兰考试培训”服务(Kaplan Test Prep)进行的一项新研究显示，高校申请者正在遭受更多的网上审查。
Of 381 college admissions officers who answered a Kaplan telephone questionnaire this year, 31 percent said they had visited an applicant’s Facebook or other personal social media page to learn more about them — a five-percentage-point increase from last year. More crucially for those trying to get into college, 30 percent of the admissions officers said they had discovered information online that had negatively affected an applicant’s prospects.
今年回答卡普兰电话问卷的高校招生人员共有381名，其中31%表示，他们查看过申请者的Facebook等社交媒体页面，以便更多地了解情况——这比去年同期增加了五个百分点。对于希望进入大学校门的人来说，有一点更加重要：30%的招生人员表示，他们在网上发现的信息对申请者的录取结果产生了负面影响。
“Students’ social media and digital footprint can sometimes play a role in the admissions process,” says Christine Brown, the executive director of K-12 and college prep programs at Kaplan Test Prep. “It’s something that is becoming more ubiquitous and less looked down upon.”
“在招生工作中，学生的社交媒体和数字足迹有时候可能会发挥一定作用。”卡普兰考试培训公司的K-12和大学预科课程项目执行主管克里斯蒂娜·布朗(Christine Brown)说。“这种事情正在变得更加普遍，不再那么让人瞧不起了。”
In the business realm, employers now vet the online reputations of job candidates as a matter of course. Given the impulsiveness of typical teenagers, however — not to mention the already fraught nature of college acceptances and rejections — the idea that admissions officers would covertly nose around the social media posts of prospective students seems more chilling.
在商业领域，审核应聘者的网上声誉现在已经被雇主视为理所当然。但是，由于青少年一般都具有冲动的特性——而且高校录取与否本来就是一件令人悬心的大事——招生人员暗中审查未来学生社交媒体信息的举动似乎更加让人寒毛倒竖。
There is some reason for concern. Ms. Brown says that most colleges don’t have formal policies about admissions officers supplementing students’ files with their own online research. If colleges find seemingly troubling material online, they may not necessarily notify the applicants involved.
这并非杞人忧天。布朗说，招生人员如何把自己在网上找到的信息用作申请者的补充资料，大多数高校都没有这方面的正式政策。如果高校在网上发现了一些看似有问题的内容，他们可能不一定会通知申请者。
“To me, it’s a huge problem,” said Bradley S. Shear, a lawyer specializing in social media law. For one thing, Mr. Shear told me, colleges might erroneously identify the account of a person with the same name as a prospective student — or even mistake an impostor’s account — as belonging to the applicant, potentially leading to unfair treatment. “Often,” he added, “false and misleading content online is taken as fact.”
“在我看来，这是一个很大的问题。”社交媒体法专业律师布拉德利·S·希尔(Bradley S. Shear)说。希尔告诉我，首先，高校可能会把同名同姓者——甚至可能是冒名顶替者——的账号误认为申请者的，从而让他们遭到不公平对待。“网上的虚假内容和误导性内容常常被视为事实。”他说。
These kinds of concerns prompted me last week to email 20 colleges and universities — small and large, private and public, East Coast and West Coast — to ask about their practices. Then I called admissions officials at 10 schools who agreed to interviews.
这些担心促使我上周给20所学院和大学——其中小型的和大型、私立和公立、东海岸和西海岸皆有——发去电子邮件，询问他们采取了何种做法。然后，我给同意接受采访的10所学校的招生人员打了电话。
Each official told me that it was not routine practice at his or her institution for admissions officers to use Google searches on applicants or to peruse their social media posts. Most said their school received so many applications to review — with essays, recommendations and, often, supplemental portfolios — that staff members wouldn’t be able to do extra research online. A few also felt that online investigations might lead to unfair or inconsistent treatment.
他们都告诉我：招生人员用谷歌(Google)搜索申请者的信息，或者仔细查看申请者的社交媒体帖子，都不是他们学校的常规做法。大多数人都说，他们学校收到了很多需要审查的申请材料——论文、推荐信，经常还会有补充材料——工作人员没有精力上网去做额外调查。少数招生人员也表示，网上调查可能会让学生遭到不公平或者前后不一的对待。
“As students’ use of social media is growing, there’s a whole variety of ways that college admissions officers can use it,” Beth A. Wiser, the director of admissions at the University of Vermont, told me. “We have chosen to not use it as part of the process in making admissions decisions.”
“随着学生越来越多地使用社交媒体，高校招生人员利用这些信息的方式可能存在诸多不同，”佛蒙特大学(University of Vermont)的招生主任贝丝·A·韦思(Beth A. Wiser)说。“我们已经决定，不在录取决定过程中使用它们。”
Other admissions officials said they did not formally prohibit the practice. In fact, they said, admissions officers did look at online material about applicants on an ad hoc basis. Sometimes prospective students themselves ask an admissions office to look at blogs or videos they have posted; on other occasions, an admissions official might look up an obscure award or event mentioned by an applicant, for purposes of elucidation.
其他招生人员表示，他们没有正式禁止这种做法。事实上，他们说，招生人员确实会一时兴起到网上看看申请者的资料。有些时候，是申请者自己让招生办公室去看他们贴在网上的博客或视频；还有些时候，招生人员需要上网查找申请者提及的不太出名的奖项或者活动，看看到底怎么回事。
“Last year, we watched some animation videos and we followed media stories about an applicant who was involved in a political cause,” says Will Hummel, an admissions officer at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. But those were rare instances, he says, and the supplemental material didn’t significantly affect the students’ admissions prospects.
“去年，我们看了一些动画视频，还关注了一名申请者参与的政治活动的有关媒体报道，”加州克莱蒙特的波莫纳学院(Pomona College)招生人员威尔·胡默尔(Will Hummel)说。但他说这种情况很少见，并且这样的补充材料对学生的录取结果没有明显影响。
Admissions officials also said they had occasionally rejected applicants, or revoked their acceptances, because of online materials. Often, these officials said, a college may learn about a potential problem from an outside source, such as a high school counselor or a graduate, prompting it to look into the matter.
这些招生人员也表示，他们确实偶尔会因为网上的信息拒绝录取申请者，或者撤销对他们的录取。高校常常是从外部人员那里，比如一名高中辅导员或者一名毕业生那里了解到可能存在一些问题，然后才对它进行调查。
Last year, an undergraduate at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., who had befriended a prospective student on Facebook, notified the admissions office because he noticed that the applicant had posted offensive comments about one of his high school teachers.
去年，加州克莱蒙特匹泽学院(Pitzer College)的一名本科生在Facebook上认识了一名申请者，然后发现他在网上发表了对自己的一名高中老师的评论，言语令人反感，于是通知了本科招生办公室。
“We thought, this is not the kind of person we want in our community,” Angel B. Perez, Pitzer’s dean of admission and financial aid, told me. With about 4,200 applications annually for a first-year class of 250 students, the school can afford to be selective. “We didn’t admit the student,” Mr. Perez said.
“我们认为，我们不愿意这样的人出现在学校里。”匹泽学院的录取和财务援助主任安吉尔·B·佩雷斯(Angel B. Perez)告诉我。这所学校每年会收到约4200个申请，新生录取名额只有250个，他们有精挑细选的资本。“我们没有录取那个学生。”佩雷斯说。
In an effort to help high school students avoid self-sabotage online, guidance counselors are tutoring them in scrubbing their digital identities. At Brookline High School in Massachusetts, juniors are taught to delete alcohol-related posts or photographs and to create socially acceptable email addresses. One junior’s original email address was “bleedingjesus,” said Lenny Libenzon, the school’s guidance department chairman. That changed.
在为了帮助高中生避免在网上破坏自己的前程，辅导员开始教导他们如何清理自己的数字足迹。在马萨诸塞州布鲁克莱恩高中(Brookline High School)，辅导员教导高中三年级（毕业年级为四年级。——译注）的学生删除与酒精饮料相关的帖子或照片，并使用社会接受程度较高的电邮地址。一名高三学生以前的电邮地址是“bleedingjesus"（流血耶稣），该校辅导部门负责人莱尼·利宾森(Lenny Libenzon)说。后来改了。
“They imagine admissions officers are old professors,” he said. “But we tell them a lot of admissions officers are very young and technology-savvy.”
“他们以为招生人员都是老教授，”他说，“但我们跟他们说，很多招生人员都非常年轻，非常了解信息技术。”
Likewise, high school students seem to be growing more shrewd, changing their searchable names on Facebook or untagging themselves in pictures to obscure their digital footprints during the college admission process.
同样，高中生自己似乎也变得越来越精明了，在高校录取期间，他们修改了Facebook上的可搜索名称，取消了标出自己名字的图片标记，以便掩盖自己的数字足迹。
“We know that some students maintain two Facebook accounts,” says Wes K. Waggoner, the dean of undergraduate admission at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
“我们知道有些学生有两个Facebook账号。”达拉斯南卫理公会大学(Southern Methodist University)的本科录取主任韦斯·K·瓦戈纳(Wes K. Waggoner)说。
For their part, high school seniors say that sanitizing social media accounts doesn’t seem qualitatively different than the efforts they already make to present the most appealing versions of themselves to colleges. While Megan Heck, 17, a senior at East Lansing High School in Michigan, told me that she was not amending any of her posts as she applied early to colleges this month, many of her peers around the country were.
高中毕业班学生说，对他们而言，清理社交媒体帐户在本质上跟把自己最美好的一面展现给高校没有区别。17岁的梅根·海克(Megan Heck)是密歇根州东兰辛高中(East Lansing High School)的毕业班学生，她告诉我，在本月申请首批高校时她不会修改自己的任何帖子，但全国各地有很多同龄人都在这么做。
“If you’ve got stuff online you don’t want colleges to see,” Ms. Heck said, “deleting it is kind of like joining two more clubs senior year to list on your application to try to make you seem more like the person they want at their schools.”
“如果你在网上有一些不想让高校看到的东西，那么删除它们就相当于是在申请材料上添加了你高三参加了另外两个俱乐部活动，目的都是让自己显得更像是他们希望录取的那种人，”海克说。
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