大学新生入学前必做功课：网络资料"大扫除"
Getting ready for college now means cleaning up your online footprint
When Kelsang Dolma began sending in her college applications, the first thing she did was lock down her Twitter account.
格桑•多玛提交大学申请时,她做的第一件事就是锁定自己的推特账户.
"I was applying to about 10 schools and I knew that every bit of information could be crucial," said Dolma, now a junior at Yale University. "My Twitter by no means was offensive, but I worried that any little joke could be a deal breaker. Most of the schools I applied to had razor thin admission rates, so I wanted to be safe rather than sorry."
多玛如今已经是耶鲁大学大三的学生,她说："我当时申请了大概10个学校,我知道每一点信息都可能很关键.我的推特绝对没有什么冒犯的内容,但我担心任何小玩笑都可能坏事.我申请的大多数学校的录取率都很低,所以我宁愿安全也不要后悔."
Dolma's story turned out safe. Others have turned out sorry.
多玛最后安全了.但其他一些学生却后悔了.
Online profiles are now just another part of a student's background like a GPA or extra-curricular activities. College admissions officers routinely check social media, with 35 percent of those surveyed by Kaplan Test Prep saying they have checked applicants' social media postings. Of those, 42 percent said that what they found had a negative impact on the student's application.
网上简介资料如今和高中平均成绩点数或课外活动一样,成了学生背景资料的一个组成部分.大学招生人员通常都会查看社交媒体内容,经卡普兰考试培训学校调查,有35%的受访招生人员表示他们都会查看申请人在社交媒体上发的帖子.其中有42%的招生人员称,他们发现的内容对学生的大学申请产生了负面影响.
Consequences can be severe. Recently, Harvard revoked the acceptance letters of 10 students after discovering they had posted offensive memes to a Facebook group chat. The event and others like it have struck fear into the hearts of students and parents alike—and for good reason.
后果可能很严重.最近,哈佛大学撤销了10名新生的入学资格,原因是发现他们在私聊小组中发布冒犯的表情.这一事件和其他类似事件让许多学生和家长心生恐惧——而他们的担心是有理由的.
Scrubbing social media accounts—or preemptively making sure their online presences can't be tracked—has become a common move for students entering their senior year of high school in 2017. Plenty of teens have had social media accounts since middle school and are terrified that an errant post or tagged photo from years ago could come back to haunt them.
删除社交媒体账号——或者事先做好准备,让他人无法追踪到自己的网上信息——已经成为2017年高年级高中生的普遍做法.许多青少年早在初中的时候就有社交媒体账号,他们很担心几年前某个言语有失的帖子或被标记的照片会突然冒出来把自己害惨.
Unfortunately, there are still lots of students who don't take necessary precautions when it comes to policing their own online presence.
"One of the things this Harvard example highlights is that a lot of kids do things online that can come back to bite them. It's important to realize that it happens on a much more regular level," said Patrick Ambron, CEO at BrandYourself, an online reputation management firm that works with students.
