S2E12: Can I Include My Social Media In My College Application?
In this episode, THOMAS TALKS ABOUT, will admissions officers look at my social media before deciding if I am accepted or not?
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Question of the Week: Can I include social media as one of my activities in the common application, and will admissions officers look at my social media before deciding if I am accepted or not?
This is a two-part question today and one that we have been getting a lot on our own social media. As someone who recently started a TikTok myself, I know how much work and effort goes into creating high-quality content. If you are an influencer, have a large following, or participate in brand partnerships you can certainly include social media as a component of your Common Application.
Do admissions officers go and look at everyone's social media? The answer...maybe. Listen to the full episode for more details.
About Thomas
Thomas is a parent and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was director of admissions and financial aid at Wharton School. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to create the best possible MBA class.
Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities, he works with diverse and underserved communities to help them become successful college students. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for parents and applicants.
Related Links
Apply to be a guest: www.thomascaleel.com/apply-for-podcast
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Hello, and welcome to the admittedly podcast. I'm your host, Thomas Caleel. And today's question of the week deals with something that's been very important to a lot of our followers on TikTok. And Instagram has to deal with social media to two-part questions. The first is, does my social media presence count as an extracurricular activity? And the follow-up is, if so, will admissions officers go in and look at my social media profile?
So to begin with an active and successful social media presence requires a lot of work a lot of time, and admissions officers understand that. So I think it's very important to carefully frame what your social media presence is, this is true for any extracurricular activity. But when we're looking at social media, right, we want to be able to convey the reach.
So how many followers how many likes, the platforms that were on, and aggregate that you can talk specifically by platform or aggregate total number of followers over these platforms, total number of likes, if you are actually a successful influencer, you're doing brand deals, talk about that. I mean, those are very concrete, very real accomplishments that are no different than somebody having an internship or doing research. If your social media is more of a hobby, however, I would say that it shouldn't be high on your activity list.
If it's something that's kind of, that you're passionate about, let's say you do restaurant reviews, or food reviews, or travel logs, in your social media, that's great. And certainly, you can incorporate that into your overall message. But it shouldn't be something that you are relying heavily on if you're not actively promoting it working on it, and getting the traction that will distinguish you from the other successful social media-focused applicants.
The next question is, you know, will admissions officers look at my social media? It's a bit of a maybe. But in general, in the larger schools that are processing, you know, 30, 40, 60, 70,000 applications, it's highly unlikely that anybody's going to check your socials, if you're claiming you are a, you know, massive influencer, with millions of followers generating hundreds of 1000s of dollars a year in revenue. Yes, they may go and verify that sometimes at the smaller schools, they will go in and do a little bit deeper dive.
So the usual caveat applies, you know, never hurts to clean up your social media a little bit. You know, make sure that anything on there is something that you wouldn't mind, friends, family, and admissions officers, seeing be smart and judicious about what you're putting out there. Maybe even flip your socials to private if you know, it's not a central component of your application.
So, hope that clears up some of the questions around that social media absolutely is a viable and meaningful activity when done right. So it's on you to communicate that effectively across the different sections of the application.
