Professional Documents
Culture Documents
In case some of you
don’t know, I wrote a book about college counseling for really smart kids.
That book is with my agent who is in the process of pushing it to
publishing companies. While he’s doing that, I’ve also been learning a lot
about the ways technology is changing the publishing industry and the
increasingly growing role that social media has in how books are delivered
to readers these days.
Thinking of that reminded me of the post I wrote way back in June, about
using social media to help you in your college search. I received a lot of
good feedback about that particular post, so this week, I’m running it here
again. Of course, the references were from current events in June, so keep
that in mindthings like Elena Kagan’s upcoming confirmation hearings
(been there, done that now.) It would be cool to hear back from you about
what events are going on at the colleges that you follow on social media.
(The photo above, by the way, has nothing to do with social media, but it’s a
photo I like a lot. It’s a twostory high sculpture that sits in front of a very
cool cafe in St. Louis, on Cherokee Street. Sorry for the digression!)
Here’s the original post, or you can go back to the June archives to see it,
too:
Just about every college or university has some kind of Facebook presence
even though those “official” things are never quite as exciting as what your
friends post, am I right? Still, there is info to be had there, and you’d be
smart to visit those sites or pages. The info there is good and will teach you
a little about schools you’re interested in.
Most colleges use those platforms as marketing devices. That’s right: they
want to attract you to apply. Nothing wrong with that. Colleges figure you
hang out on social networking sites, so they want to meet you there and get
you to see how great their schools are. So they prepare specific things for
you to readthings that will increase your desire to apply.
I’m discovering that Twitter, however, allows for more creative and open
ended research. With Twitter, you’ll still get the soundbytes that might
show up else where, but the difference is that the 140 character limit means
that you end up going to different websites on your own if you’re interested
in the topic of the tweet. From there, you can browse or surf or wander
wherever you want because there are usually dozens of links that lead to
further links and so on.
And by following a specific college’s tweets, you will automatically receive
news headlines that you can explore further or ignore. So a quick and easy
way to learn a little more about the ethos of a school, then, is to follow the
institution on Twitter.
Last week, I followed four schools just for fun. I learned that Babson, for
example, has this whole thing going on about women as entrepreneurs.
Their tweet: if female entrepreneurs started with same capital as males,
they'd add 6 million jobs to economy in 5 yr . Then, the URL takes you to
the Bloomberg BusinessWeek article about real stuff going on in the
business world.
Rice University posted a few comments about the fact that they’re hosting
Teach for America this summer, and by going to those links, you’ll get an
insight to Rice that is way beyond what you’ll find in the fancy view books.
Similarly, the George Washington University tweeted about the upcoming
confirmation hearing of Elena Kagan, and the link refers to a talk that will
be given on campus by former Clinton and Bush aides, suggesting how she
should respond to possible questions. (See GWTweets for more.)
At Johns Hopkins, the Peabody Institute describes itself in its bio as “the
oldest American conservatory tweeting in the 21st century,” and then the
tweets included master classes on the flute, a Bach guitar event, and even a
job announcement posted by the career center.
These kinds of tweets give you an added glimpse into the life of a college,
and by offering you a constantly updated range of topics to read or not
read, they give you a little more control over what you discover.
My suggestion is to find the right Twitter account for the colleges you’re
interested in and to follow their tweets.
Now, be warned that you might find 10 to 20 different accounts (ranging
from the official one to the catering stream) for any given school, so you’ll
have to explore a little before you find the ones that are interesting to you. I
recommend the official news to begin. That’s plenty. Also, you might not
find a Twitter account for every college, and that’s okay, too. Don’t make
the mistake of judging a school by its Twitter accountremember, I’m
suggesting you use it as one more tool to learn about the things going on
there. And last, don’t feel that you have to follow a Twitter account
forever; hang with it for a week, a month, or however long you want.
Nobody is making admissions decisions based on whether or not you
follow them on Twitter!