How will your Political Perspective impact your College Admission?Answered
Hello everyone,
Since politics and philosophy are two of my primary interests. As a result, I'll have to express myself. Although I make every effort to be objective and neutral, this is not always possible. Because I am involved in activism and news, I am sometimes needed to make perspective/biased statements. How will my public statements from news reports/headlines influence my college admission? Will admissions officers search my social media and post information about me on the internet? So, should I keep my identity hidden when such reports are made about me? If I choose to remain anonymous, how will I prove it's me if I ever need it on my resume? Or should I stay low and reject such reportings before college?
If there are peers that have been in a similar situation please share your advice.
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2 answers
Your social media account presence/footprint and impact is relevant to college admissions officers for 2 distinct purposes. 1. To evaluate your demonstrated interests in the college if they care about such things. 2. To gauge whether you use your online voice in a manner consistent with the rest of your application narrative, if that voice is speaking your truths and if those truths are aligned with the types of incoming cohorts the school is looking for.
If you are far left or far right leaning, and you have a logical, consistent and articulate argument for your views, even if they are not mainstream or centrist, you will not be penalized for having them. However, if you showed up on January 6th, 2020 at the Capital Bldg in DC to help overturn the election or are a member of Antifa that has been arrested for inciting violence against ICE or other Federal agents, I would say you are probably on a agency list already and it doesn't make sense to attempt to scrub you records.
I think it's always best to identify colleges whose culture aligns with your own values and political leanings and hope for the best. If you are ultra-liberal it wouldn't make sense to apply to BYU, Biola College, SMU, or Liberty University. And if you are ultra-conservative, applying to American, UVermont, UOregon, NorthWestern, UCSantaCruz seems futile.
Example, lets say you are an online hacker and use your skills to support your political views and hack into servers of companies, governments whose views contradict with yours. Lets say you use an anonymous tag and a hidden IP address so no one can trace the hack back to your personally. It still makes sense to pick a college who whose student body have students like you. So perhaps CMU, GTech, MIT, Caltech, UCBerkeley, would be good fit.
Advise to 9th, 10th graders:
Prior to applying to college I had various ECs that supported activism and using my voice. I was editor of my HS newspaper, editor of 2 add'l creative writing journals, a published journalist with a local newspaper, board member of 3 DEIA community based groups, board member of a Library literacy group, and had spoken publicly at various city council meetings that are archived indefinitely. In addition, I had an insta account. But I did not have a FB or Twitter or TikTok account in HS on purpose because I didn't want to risk posting something that might be misconstrued as being something derogatory or worse, radical. I thought it incumbent on me to keep a very transparent and clean social media profile. Rather than using Social Media as a platform for my voice, I did the opposite. I used social media to confirm forensically, evidence of my ECs and activism that I did through official organizations, venues and events. So if a admissions officer googled my name, they would see all the search results of entries that supported my application narrative, rather than finding some new piece of information that was out of character or not part of my narrative. It's important that you do not look like a jack ass nor act like one on social media.
Colleges value political activism and make it a goal to accept students who have diverse perspectives. Having a public presence and a record of political engagement will most likely help you in the admissions process, so you should openly talk about your activism in your EC list and essays. Being able to link to a news report that mentions your name is a big achievement, regardless of political leanings. Since admissions officers have limited time to review each application, they will likely not do a deep dive into your public presence unless they are considering awarding you with a merit scholarship. In any case, prepare for each school to at least do a quick Google and social media search of you and own your presence.
One caveat is that every university has its own values and culture, and that will affect how they react to your public statements. For example, a Catholic university would not be enthusiastic about staunchly anti-Catholic public statements. If you could see a conflict of values like that happening, I recommend not applying to the school at all. Hope this helps!
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Also, I could choose to use a pseudonym, that would be an option too for written content. Again should I use my real name for more credibility or not?