Headmaster’s Facebook fear for students

UNIVERSITIES are using Facebook to weed out unsuitable candidates, the headmaster of a leading private school has warned.

Rod Grant, head of Clifton Hall School in Newbridge near Edinburgh, said the social networking site was a “massive blessing” to university admissions officers.

He said unsuspecting school leavers were being encouraged to become a “friend” of university Facebook pages during the admissions process, allowing institutions access to the student’s own page. Mr Grant said: “As I tell my students, don’t publish anything on a website that you wouldn’t let your granny see, because once published it is potentially there forever.

“If you have two candidates who both have the same grades and both interview well, then it’s a way of choosing between them. I know employers are already doing this, and there’s no question in my mind that universities are doing it too.”

A spokeswoman from Universities Scotland: “In making their decisions, universities rely on the information applicants provide via UCAS. The notion that universities’ professional admissions staff are looking to the pages of Facebook as a reliable source of information, on which to base their entry decisions, simply isn’t credible.”