The Office of Undergraduate Admissions doesn’t use social media to review its applicants, despite a growing trend to do so. 

According to Thomas Griffin, director of Undergraduate Admissions at N.C. State, an applicant’s social media posts are rarely taken into consideration when they are applying to the school.

“If there is a red flag raised by an applicant and we want to look further into that student, we do all kinds of different things to find out about that particular situation, but we won’t deny an applicant based on what cat videos they post,” Griffin said.

The only behavioral information that could prevent a student from getting accepted to the university is a criminal background, Griffin said.

“I don’t think it’s relevant to a student’s academic potential,” Griffin said.  “We review a potential student by reviewing the information given to us in his or her application.”

According to Rachel Ensing, an undergraduate admissions counselor at N.C. State, social media isn’t used to screen applicants because so many students apply every year.

“We really don’t [check social media accounts] here because we have such a large applicant pool,” Ensign said.

Some students, such as Storm Morgan, sophomore in business administration and Spanish, agreed with the admission office’s policy of not screening social media accounts during the application process.

“I think it’s a good thing they aren’t using social media,” Morgan said. “It allows the University to focus on more important aspects of what makes the student qualified.”

However, Ryan Seawell, a senior in economics and statistics, said that using social media is a good idea for the college admissions process and any information that helps colleges determine which applicant is better is useful.

“People aren’t going to present unflattering information about themselves, you have to dig to find the dirt,” Seawell said.

 Thirty-one percent of admissions officers surveyed said they had visited one of an applicant’s personal social media pages to learn more about them, and 30 percent said they had found information that had been detrimental to an applicant’s chances of acceptance—a 5 percent increase from last year, according to The New York Times.