This article—the one you are reading right now—is part of my digital footprint that 67% of top ranked colleges admissions officers admitted could be used to research applicants, according to a 2023 Kaplan survey. That said, only 28% of officers said they actually check, but the question is: are you willing to take that risk?
We like to believe admissions officers only see what our applications say on paper: the polished essays, the strategic list of extracurriculars. But what if the first version of us colleges see isn’t the one we spent months building, rather the one that shows up after a Google search.
Your digital footprint is not a scrapbook of disappearing stories and private group chats. It’s a public, indestructible record of who you’ve been and who you appear to be. For some applicants, a thoughtful online presence may reinforce the character depicted in their application. For others, a misinterpreted comment or a photo out of context might hinder months of effort.
And as Christine Lilley, Kaplan’s executive director of college admissions programs, put it, research shows that when admissions officers do look, social media is “much likelier to negatively impact an applicant’s chances of getting in than helping them.”
Unlike an essay draft, the internet doesn’t forget. You can delete, archive, or lock down accounts, but media spreads fast. A college might never look. They might look and find nothing. Or they might look and learn something you didn’t realize was visible.
So does your online presence matter more than your college application? There isn’t one statistic that can answer that entirely. What the data does suggest is that the admissions process extends further than Common App submission boxes. Part of it now exists in a space we didn’t necessarily design for judgment by admissions officers. It’s a space built on forgotten posts and versions of ourselves we’ve already outgrown.
Most likely, our online presence won’t make or break most applications. But it’s the only part admissions officers can see before we choose to show them anything else. And in an era where first impressions can live online forever, that possibility is something the statistics can’t ignore.