Academia and Facebook are finally getting along, and applicants are taking notice


Did you hear about the college-bound teenager who turned down the university with a boring Facebook page, Digital Trends reports? Parents and admissions counselors constantly harp on the perils of social media, nagging students to clean up their vulgar shares on Facebook, take down party shots from Instagram, and watch their language on Twitter — but now the shoe’s on the other foot as students eye college and university social media pages in their application quest. About two-thirds of the class of 2012 used social media to research colleges and universities, according to a survey of 7,000 high school students by online education resources Inigral and Zinch. Facebook stands head and shoulders above the pack for admissions research, with 57 percent of students checking the social media giant for prospective college information. Some 38 percent categorized their social media findings as influential in their enrollment decision. Student research engagement on other social networks trails Facebook, with applicants also searching on YouTube (42 percent), Twitter (18 percent), and Pinterest (6 percent).

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