<p>by-line: Each entering class more connected than last, but some schools worry about privacy, inappropriate contacts.</p>
<p>[Colleges</a> learn to live with social media – baltimoresun.com ](<a href=“http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-md.socialmedia30sep30,0,7058660.story]Colleges ”>http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-md.socialmedia30sep30,0,7058660.story )</p>
<p>Focusing in part on whats happening at JHU (with quotes from Admissions Dan). From the use of social media during admissions (and the friending of admissions officers question) to freshman pre-arrival orientation.</p>
<p>
Hopkins does its best social media work between the time students are admitted and the time they arrive on campus, Creasy said. That’s when Hopkins builds a new community through its restricted Facebook page and through other media such as blogs from current students. If the university does its job, top students will feel comfortable choosing Hopkins over other schools like Cornell or Brown.</p>
<p>Social media experts equate the process to reading online customer reviews of a new camera. They say it’s simply the way young consumers are used to shopping.</p>
<p>“They’re scrutinizers,” said Mark Greenfield, director of Web services at the University of Buffalo and a popular speaker on the subject. “And they trust the network, what their social connections have to say, more than any institution.”</p>
<p>Facebook provides a sense of comfort, students agreed.
</p>
<p>this is interesting
Creasy noted that 1,220 of the 1,350 members of Hopkins’ freshman class joined the university’s Facebook page. Though it might be a coincidence, admitted students from the class enrolled at a significantly higher rate than predicted by the university’s statistical models.
</p>
<p>
Forget awkward get-to-know-you mixers on freshmen residence halls. If the software takes off, students could forge friendships with dozens of like-minded peers before ever setting foot on campus.</p>
<p>If that sounds eerily inhuman, you probably don’t have a grasp on the elaborate social lives teenagers maintain without meeting face-to-face.</p>
<p>“They’re on Facebook to develop a sense of belonging and community,” Triest said. "They’re just out there saying, ‘Who’s like me?’ "</p>
<p>The one thing counselors seem certain about is that we’ll all take social media for granted in the near future.</p>
<p>“I can see a world in four or five years where a Twitter account is a basic promotional tool for applying students,” Creasy said. “I fear that world a bit, but really, who knows what’s going to happen in five years?”
</p>
timely
September 30, 2009, 12:50pm
2
<p>I know that when my son was accepted to college last year, he pretty much immediately linked up with some other admittees on facebook and they ended up having a pretty large group. They all seemed to enjoy getting to know one another. Interestingly, S didn’t even become real friends with any of the ones he talked to a lot on fb. He met them at orientation, and talked to some of them a bit, but that was it. Once he was there, he made friends the old-fashioned way.</p>