Student Instagram accounts and admissions

[Anonymous]

A lot of people with a TINY bit of info are making a whole lot up in this thread.

Admissions offices use CRMs (also used by every business you interact with) to send emails to students. This is also how dance majors get info about the dance department - the student’s self-entered interests can be used to get them info that’s pertinent to them.

CRMs track if messages are opened and if people click through. IN MOST CASES, this is used to generate data about how effective the communication strategy is and inform future plans. IN A FEW CASES, it is used to gauge interest.

Tracking down students in social media is close to impossible. It’s a rare students that has their legal name as a username.

[Anonymous]

NP.

Slate, the admission file reader app, has a page display of webclicks on a timeline. I believe it is by IP address. The AO can hover over data points and see what was being looked at.

The more significant aspect may be how these data are factored into yield algorithms. It's all about the data.

I do not believe that social media like Instagram plays a role.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You guys are grossly naive if you don't believe colleges track online interactions. They track what emails you have opened up from the school on down the line.

Ugh. I have a blocker set up so that companies are not tracking our family email open rate. Do not want to whitelist whatever tracker pixels I think colleges will be using.

[Anonymous]

This ridiculous thread is a perfect illustration of the paranoia that comes with college admissions.

Any of you who honestly think that colleges tracking your kids Instagram accounts is going to make any difference when it comes to their admission have truly lost your marbles. It’s all about grades, test, scores, and extracurricular activities. That’s it. What the hell is wrong with you? You’re a bunch of obsessed weirdos

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP.

Slate, the admission file reader app, has a page display of webclicks on a timeline. I believe it is by IP address. The AO can hover over data points and see what was being looked at.

The more significant aspect may be how these data are factored into yield algorithms. It's all about the data.

I do not believe that social media like Instagram plays a role.

IP addresses change all the time. While I do believe they are collecting tons and tons of data, I don’t believe it is factoring into admissions decisions to the extent some of you seem to think.

[Anonymous]

I know a kid whose Dad runs a public IG account for him to basically have a public resume for MIT. It's gross IMO.

[Anonymous]

Well she could create an instagram and just follow colleges and not friends to see what is going on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You guys are grossly naive if you don't believe colleges track online interactions. They track what emails you have opened up from the school on down the line.

+1

My neighbor's DD got rejected from UVA and part of the reason outlined was "failure to adequately engage with our Social Media managers"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This ridiculous thread is a perfect illustration of the paranoia that comes with college admissions.

Any of you who honestly think that colleges tracking your kids Instagram accounts is going to make any difference when it comes to their admission have truly lost your marbles. It’s all about grades, test, scores, and extracurricular activities. That’s it. What the hell is wrong with you? You’re a bunch of obsessed weirdos

While I think the instagram angle is a can of worms, colleges do incorporate click data into their yield algorithms. This is what the multibillion dollar enrollment management industry hath wrought. See, e.g., https://www.scu.edu/admission/choosing-scu/scu-admission-blog/authors/eryn/9-ways-to-demonstrate-interest-virtually.html ("6. Open emails from colleges! Click the links that you’re genuinely interested in. Some schools do track these behaviors. 7. Do your own research on social media and online! ...And, of course, if you do any of this exploring, tell us which pages, conversations, videos, or posts you liked and why!")

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP.

Slate, the admission file reader app, has a page display of webclicks on a timeline. I believe it is by IP address. The AO can hover over data points and see what was being looked at.

The more significant aspect may be how these data are factored into yield algorithms. It's all about the data.

I do not believe that social media like Instagram plays a role.

It's a pain in the neck to leave Slate Reader to do this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys are grossly naive if you don't believe colleges track online interactions. They track what emails you have opened up from the school on down the line.

+1

My neighbor's DD got rejected from UVA and part of the reason outlined was "failure to adequately engage with our Social Media managers"

BS

[Anonymous]

Here’s what we did:

- make a list of target schools. Sign up for emails and webinars.
- Summer before senior year, attend webinars, and when you are in the webinar, click on associated links
- every single email you get from a university that tracks demonstrated interest, and many do even if they seem to say that they don’t. Looking at Vanderbilt, Northwestern and Duke, click on links and continue to navigate onto the site into areas of interest, including major and extracurricular, clubs, events.
- create a new family email address for all applications and correspondence, that you have access to so in the fall when your kid gets busy you can just open these random emails and click links.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know a kid whose Dad runs a public IG account for him to basically have a public resume for MIT. It's gross IMO.

Most of the kids wanting to be recruited to play their sport on the college level will have a public IG account showcasing their training and games to share with prospective college coaches. It is standard to do this. What you explain above is no different and as people on here love to argue that academic powerhouse kids should be treated the same as the athletic ones when it comes to college admissions (and I do not disagree), than what you explain makes sense. Only the kid him/herself should be doing it, not dad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DC got into two Ivies without an Instagram account.

In 1990?

[Anonymous]

My kids did not do any of this but they did click on emails from schools they were interested in periodically.