Each year many admission officers get together and compare notes of some of the crazy things that we have seen during our visits to high school programs, college fairs, and during on-campus visits. One of the growing topics of the conversation is how high school students can be perceived by their online presence.

Youngstown State University is not in the practice of checking students’ social media profile to determine whether a student is acceptable into the university; however we are in the practice of educating young adults to make better decisions when they create an account and while they are posting on Facebook,Twitter, YouTube and blogs like this one.

So here are some helpful hints to better protect your identity and reputation:

• Email Address
  If your email address is a little inappropriate (i.e. dirtydevil@yahoo or heartbreaker@gmail) consider obtaining a new one that is more professionally acceptable by colleges and the corporate world. Perhaps an initial and birthday combination type of email address. By doing this you will know which email accounts to go into for social events and which one to access for your professional communications.

• Keep Things Private
  Make your accounts as private as the security will allow. This includes determining who you friends are. Remember every post that you make, every photo you upload is live as soon as you click submit. Make sure you keep things open only to those who you want to see them. Also only encourage your friends to do the same.

• Keep Your Friends Close
  Only allow people you know to follow you on Twitter or be your friend on Facebook. I always make an effort to try and eliminate people that I have not heard from in a while from my accounts. Please remember that social media is not a competition to see who is more popular.

There are many other concerns about online privacy, however these are the ones that most admissions professionals see most often and make the most sense to do.