According to an article in The New York Times, it can. More and more businesses are using Facebook and MySpace to go beyond résumés and interviews. Will college admissions follow suit?

By Gargoyle staff

Posted Saturday, June 10, 2006, The OG, news

UNI STUDENTS KNOW all about the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, and Friendster.

They've also heard about students getting in trouble with school authorities because of items posted on those sites.

They've even heard about sexual predators using those sites to troll for easy marks.

Now a New York Times article has identified yet another reason for students to be cautious about what they post: losing a job opportunity.

“When a small consulting company in Chicago was looking to hire a summer intern this month, the company's president went online to check on a promising candidate who had just graduated from the University of Illinois,” reporter Alan Finder writes.

“At Facebook, a popular social networking site, the executive found the candidate's Web page with this description of his interests: ‘smokin' blunts' (cigars hollowed out and stuffed with marijuana), shooting people and obsessive sex, all described in vivid slang.

“It did not matter that the student was clearly posturing. He was done.

“‘A lot of it makes me think, what kind of judgment does this person have?' said the company's president, Brad Karsh. ‘Why are you allowing this to be viewed publicly, effectively, or semipublicly?'

“Many companies that recruit on college campuses have been using search engines like Google and Yahoo to conduct background checks on seniors looking for their first job. But now, college career counselors and other experts say, some recruiters are looking up applicants on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Xanga and Friendster, where college students often post risqué or teasing photographs and provocative comments about drinking, recreational drug use and sexual exploits in what some mistakenly believe is relative privacy.

“When viewed by corporate recruiters or admissions officials at graduate and professional schools, such pages can make students look immature and unprofessional, at best.”

To read the complete story, click here.

Although the article focuses on how employers use networking sites as a screening device, the obvious question for high school students is: Will college admission committees follow suit?

Even more to the point: Should they? Can they? And what will students do in response?

More is sure to follow in future Gargoyles.

[Note: For a direct link to the comic that Ben Hyman refers to below, click here.]