Why Should I Be Careful in Social Media?

Session 02

Everybody is on social media now. That includes the admissions committees. Make sure that what the public can see won’t get you rejected.

When you’re applying to medical school, you’re displaying yourself to the admissions committee. You are telling them your strengths, weaknesses, struggles, and just about everything.

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[00:56] The Social Media Trick

A lot of students do this trick of changing their name on social media to something obscure. But I don’t recommend you doing that, particularly with Facebook. If you have an issue with your account for some reason and you need to reach out to Facebook and request access, Facebook is going to know who you are and prove your identity to them. And if the name of your Facebook account doesn’t match the name on your driver’s license, there’s an issue.

It happened recently to my friend. In the podcasting space, he never puts his real date of birth into social media. Somebody marked his account as a fraudulent account or spam. And he had a very hard time getting his account back because what was on his driver’s license (which Facebook asked for) didn’t match what he had entered in his profile.

So I don’t recommend changing your name on your accounts. Put your name out there.

[02:35] Be Careful What You Post on Social Media

I was in the Hangout and something caught my eye about the comment made. I clicked on their profile and checked it out. And as I started scrolling, most pictures were benign until I caught a picture of two men dressed in Nazi uniforms. No comment, no description of the picture. Just the image.

I started thinking to myself that if I was an admissions committee member looking at this right now and see this very public picture in Nazi SS outfit, I would be questioning why. I actually don’t understand it.

So if you have these types of pictures (drinking and cleavage shots for women and inappropriate comments for guys out there), I suggest you take all of your inappropriate stuff out of social media. And if you’re not sure whether it’s inappropriate or not, just take it all and mark them as private.

Don’t let the outside world see your pictures. That’s the safest bet. There are specific settings on Facebook so you can actually limit who gets access to your photos.

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[06:20] Don’t Be a Nazi

If a student is assigned by the admissions committee to check your social media accounts and they stumble across a picture of you dressed as a Nazi, you don’t want to not get an interview because of that. Or maybe you’ve been interviewed already and as part of their post interview process, they look at social media and see your pic. That would be the worst reason not to get into medical school. And being a Nazi is pretty bad.