Is your social media presence evaluated by b-schools?

My colleague Matt Symonds’ recent Forbes article, 5 Social Media Tips To Protect Your Future From Your Online Past, offers some advice on how your social media presence may affect your business school application. Most schools don’t have an official online screening policy and process in place; however certain information they find about you on the net can influence a school’s decision on your acceptance. Matt and the rest of us at Fortuna Admissions suggest that whether you’re applying to b-school (or applying for a job), it might be time to review your online presence and clean up any embarrassing albums and outbursts, and demonstrate your level of professional engagement.

Here are the 5 suggested social media tips to consider before clicking ‘submit’ on your MBA application (for more details on each, read Matt's amusing full article):

#1: Do a personal online audit.
#2: If in doubt, delete.
#3: Make sure your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date
#4: Start cultivating a more professional side on Facebook, Twitter, and similar platforms.
#5: Consider changing your privacy settings.

At the end of the day there’s no need to become paranoid and imagine that admission officers are going to spend hours checking out your blog archives and Facebook photos posted in 2008. They have a heavy workload, and in the majority of cases any online audit will most likely be quite brief. But you should err on the side of caution, and everything you put up on a social media site should be an accurate reflection of who you are as well as how you want to communicate your personal brand to the outside world.

Don’t let yourself be judged by your past when you’re working so hard to build your future.