Facebook links students with K-State reps

The gap between high school and college seems to be shrinking, one Facebook.com friendship at a time.

Six K-State admissions representatives have created professional Facebook pages through which they interact with prospective students, most of high school age, said Alex Suñé, graduate research assistant with New Student Services.

A Kaplan survey found that 71 percent of college admissions representatives at 401 of the top U.S. colleges and universities say they or another rep at their school have received a Facebook or MySpace.com "friend request" from an applicant, according to a Sept. 17 Reuters.com article.

Mardell Maxwell, K-State admissions representative, has had his professional Facebook profile set up for one month and said he spends a small amount of time managing the page each day.

He also said he chose to keep his personal page completely private, so if another Facebook user were to search for his profile, they would only find his professional page.

He said this is both to avoid confusion for students and for his privacy.

Along with hiding personal pages, Suñé said there is a strict set of boundaries set for the representatives who have professional pages. Maxwell said he has appreciated these boundaries, which include not initiating friend requests, but letting prospective students take that step.

"I have had a lot of high school students who have sought me out," he said. "That lets me know that they want me to be their Facebook friend — they want to make that connection."

Suñé said this is not a new trend, but it is one that the K-State is starting to take more seriously with the growing popularity of social networking sites.

Blake Leonard, sophomore in accounting, said she was Facebook friends with her K-State admissions rep in 2008, when she was a senior in high school.

"It was more of a relaxed environment than just simply e-mailing back and forth," she said. "I felt like I was just talking to someone at my level who could answer my questions."

Leonard said communicating with her admissions rep through Facebook was efficient, and she always received answers quickly through messaging and chatting. She said she asked her rep questions pertaining to transferring credits and choosing a major, and said it helped her feel at home at K-State while she was trying to decide where to attend college.

"It was good to have someone at K-State I was already connected with," Leonard said.

Ryan Newton, K-State admissions representative, said he receives a message every couple of days through his professional Facebook page from prospective students about admissions, scholarships and college in general.

While Newton said the professional pages allow representatives to be an extended resource to students, he also said they have to respect boundaries and be cautious with students who see it as a way to manipulate the application process.

"Some students can come under the impression that admissions reps made decisions in terms of whether a student gets into the college, so this might be a negative issue," he said. "Some students will or won't add us because of this, but hasn't been a problem for me."

Suñé said just six of eight K-State representatives are testing Facebook professional pages to see how receptive prospective students are of them. He said they will then evaluate how helpful the pages are and go from there, most likely continuing to develop and hone the system.

"I believe it has a future because so many students are on Facebook," he said. "And now with smart phones and Blackberries, 24 hours a day we have access. It's just another way we can connect people to K-State."