As if getting them into the right pre-school, making sure they tie their shoes on time, and packing their adolescent days with just the right balance of after-school activities and opportunities to "give back" wasn't enough to stress about for the next 18 years. If you want to get your kids into a good college, you might want to make sure they keep those Myspace pages private.
One in 10 college admissions offers surveyed by Kaplan Test Prep admitted they browse prospective students' social networking profiles before deciding whether to toss an application into the "yes" pile or toss it out the door. Although my 3-year-old won't be posting online anytime soon, what's limited to a few hundred sites right now will be virtual minefield for the Google-savvy admissions staff 15 years down the line. And I don't see myself keeping her off-line.
Unlike parents I've heard who have actually set up systems on the family computer to log every keystroke their child makes (essentially allowing them carte blanche to their child's instant messages, Myspace blogs, e-mails and even their random Google searches), I'm crossing my fingers that the answer to keeping her safe will be in arming with her with the right information. Want to go online? Don't tell anyone anything. Want a Myspace page? Keep it private.
That's what confuses me about the chief Myspace complainers. They're logging on, searching, and finding their kids' Myspace pages - left wide open to everyone, including snooping college administrators. Instead of telling their kids' to button up, they're shutting down their entire world. And what do we all remember from our high school days was the best way to for our parents to get us to do something? Tell us we couldn't. Myspace, Facebook and the like have become kids' alternative to the good old-fashioned pen and a journal. In a world where they spend the day with fingers glued to a Crackberry or a laptop, it's no wonder. And it's just as cathartic.
But for a college admissions officer who doesn't know your kid, who's looking for any reason to throw one more application in the rejection pile to satisfy the college's limited availability, a social networking page written by a silly kid, a goofy kid, isn't going to come off as someone being silly or goofy or just getting things off their chest. In fact, 38 percent of officers said a page view put a child's application firmly in the rejection pile.
So what's a parent to do? Remind your kids, big brother is watching - so keep the blinds closed.
Image: Nick Halstead
