Harvard: Admission of 10 students rescinded

Staff Reports
Statue of John Harvard at Harvard University.
Statue of John Harvard at Harvard University.
Image: Stock Photo.
It’s true: Bad behavior on social networking sites can have lasting consequences. Just ask 10 students who won’t be going to Harvard this fall.

     The Harvard Crimson, the school newspaper, is reporting that the applicants have been notified that the school has rescinded their admission because of objectionable Facebook posts.
      In a story posted today, the newspaper reports that the prospective members of Harvard College’s class of 2021 traded “sexually explicit memes and messages that sometimes targeted minority groups in a private Facebook group chat.” The newspaper said the students had formed a messaging group entitled, at one point, “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens.”
     Screenshots of the chat obtained by the Crimson reportedly showed images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust and the deaths of children. The school’s admissions office did not comment publicly about its action.
     As the country’s most noteworthy Ivy League school, prestigious Harvard is awash in applicants. The website for the school’s communications office reports that this year a record 39,506 students applied for the class of 2021, of which 2,056 were accepted.
     Admissions officers at other schools also have examined applicants' social networking pages. Kaplan Test Prep’s 2014 survey of college admissions officers found that 35 percent reported visiting applicants’ social media sites to learn more about them. Prospective college applicants are often advised to clean up their social networking pages  -- taking down any offensive photographs -- in preparation for the admission process.
         

      Related:

      Is college worth the cost?

     6 top schools that don’t require the ACT or SAT

     Follow StudyHall.Rocks on Twitter. 

     If you would like to comment, give us a shout, or like us on Facebook and tell us what you think.