Those interested in applying to law school may want to be more careful with what they post on Facebook.
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A survey released last month by Kaplan Test Prep shows that out of all graduate schools, law school admissions offices are the most likely to take an applicant's online presence into account during the admissions process.
Conducted in July and August of 2011, the survey interviewed 128 of the 200 American Bar Association-accredited law schools in the United States. The survey found that 41 percent of law school admissions officers admit to researching an applicant on search engines, while 37 percent checked an applicant's profile on Facebook or other social networking sites.
"Given how rigid the admissions process is for law schools, it is surprising technology has affected the process," said Jeff Thomas, director of pre-law programs at Kaplan. "But it is not surprising in that law schools do not interview every applicant. It makes sense that law schools want to do more investigation to make sure the candidates they're going to be accessing will be able to practice law and a high ethical standard."
According to Melanie Giger, assistant director of admissions at the NYU School of Law, NYU does not use the Internet to investigate applicants.
Mathiew Le, director of admissions at the University of Washington School of Law, thinks the validity and reliability of information found on the Internet is questionable.
"The Internet is vast, and the information displayed in the results from a simple search engine depends on many variables," he said.
While NYU School of Law and the University of Washington do not research an applicant's Internet presence, other law schools across the country do so, but with precaution.
Sarah Zearfoss, senior assistant dean for admissions at the University of Michigan Law School, thinks checking facts on a student's application on a search engine is reasonable, but she does not advocate checking social networking sites like Facebook.
"There's an important difference between holding a candidate accountable for information they have put on the web about themselves and penalizing them for something, quite possibly totally inaccurate, that a third party might post," Zearfoss said.
Sam Goldberg, a second-year law student at NYU, said he was not surprised to hear about the survey.
"[My Facebook] has definitely changed," he said. "I deleted a bunch of undergrad and partying, drinking pics and put restricted security settings. Employers use it too, so it was only a matter of time before I had to do it anyway."
