Social Media’s Bearing on How to Get Scholarships for College
Roseanne Barr, Amanda Brynes, Jermaine Brown, Johnny Manziel, and a host of other celebrities and athletes have faced serious, even career-ending consequences for bad social media posts. Ranging from offensive and racist to profane and deeply immature, all it takes is one bad post to push pause on a person’s career.
Sometimes a bad post can prevent you from acquiring the dream job you’ve always wanted. While many of the class of 2021 are already Googling how to get scholarships for college, are they thinking about the state of their social media accounts?
If the answer is no. They should start now.
How Social Media Impacts Scholarships for College Students
You may not readily recognize the names Leah Zenk or Shedrick McCall. The former was awarded a scholarship to play lacrosse, the latter received a Division I scholarship to play football. What both have in common—revoked scholarships. One due to a racist social media post, the other for posting a vulgar video. But, Zenk and McCall aren’t the only ones to derail scholarship opportunities.
According to a recent Kaplan Test Prep survey, approximately 35% of college admissions officers check social networking sites (like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) to learn more about their collegiate candidates. Additionally, 42% of admissions officers shared that information found on prospective student social media pages negatively affected their applicant status.
These statistics bring about a valuable point—you may not even have the opportunity to receive a scholarship in the first place if your social media platforms harbor the wrong kind of content.
Need Help Applying for College Scholarships with Social Media in Mind?
It’s important to remember that the best scholarship websites are flooded with competition. This makes it all the more important that you know what type of social media posts might be flagged as inappropriate and negative.
Here are some tips to help you assess your social media standing before you apply for scholarships:
- Understand what scholarship and school admissions personnel deem negative in terms of social media, which are: any sexual, drug-related, violent, profane, racist, and/or vulgar content (in any way, shape, or form).
- Remove said inappropriate posts.
- Scan your social media accounts to make sure you haven’t missed anything! We can help you with this part. Our FCRA and EEOC compliant reputation management technology has provided 100,000 scans, detecting upwards of 3.3 million potentially harmful posts (as of September 2020)!
Let Your Social Media Work for You Not Against You
Don’t take this information as a sign to delete all your social media accounts. In fact, for as many colleges, College Board Scholarships, and other admissions centers that are perusing Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and other networking accounts for inappropriate material, they are also noting positive posts and consistency. If you haven’t done so already, add more positivity to your profile and continue to keep it clean.
And, remember, if you need help determining whether you have any lurking negative posts, you have us to help.