Social media. College admissions. Two issues that every high school student grapples with. Social media seems to grow hotter each day, and college admissions bring stress and competitiveness. However, for students, social media opens a vast swath of college resources that would otherwise be inaccessible.
When taking into account college admissions, it’s important to understand disparities in students’ admissions processes. While Redwood fortunately has six dedicated counselors to help every student, according to the National Education Association, schools across the United States lacking funding don’t have access to in-school college counselors. This creates a lack of access to college guidance for many students.
Becky Bjursten, Redwood’s College and Career Specialist said, “I think [social media] is great because it’s given serious access to see things that, whether it’s a virtual tour or a post or whatever it is about a campus that you wouldn’t have been able to see before without visiting that campus.”
According to the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, the American School Counselor Association recommends a student to counselor ratio of 250:1. However, in the 2023 to 24 academic year, the national average student to counselor ratio was 376:1.
These ratios are ridiculous. The national average is 50.4 percent higher than the recommended ratio. If one counselor had to meet with all 376 students for just 15 minutes each, it would take nearly three full weeks of nonstop meetings.
This higher student-to-counselor ratio is in part due to schools with high enrollments of students of color being less likely to have dedicated college counselors. In fact, some states average over 600 students per counselor.
Equally important, according to Maria Solis, for the National Education Association, approximately 17 percent of United States high school students do not have access to a school counselor.
Social media provides the technology and accessibility for more students to research colleges, explore their interests and see comments other students have made about different schools.
“Many students are exposed to colleges through social media before they have even visited a single school,” Bjursten said. “With colleges marketing themselves through social media, virtual tours and informational videos are available for free to anyone with an internet connection.”
According to Kathy Katella of Yale Medicine, one concern that often follows social media is that by using these platforms, users may experience mental health problems such as anxiety, depression and fear of missing out (FOMO).
However, according to Amy Roeder in a study conducted by Harvard University in 2020, “We found that routine social media use—for example, using social media as part of everyday routine and responding to content that others share—is positively associated with all three health outcomes.”
The study also highlighted how the fear of missing out (FOMO) can actually be countered by the connection social media can foster between people. Outcomes include changes in social well-being, positive and mental health.
Many social media platforms such as Tik Tok have content creators that offer college admission advice. For example, @admittedlyco is an account run by Thomas Caleel, former director of Master of Business Administration Admissions at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Caleel has more than 33,700 followers and uses his platform as a tool to give advice to people online about college admissions.
Other accounts include @Goharsguide, run by Gohar Khan, who is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate with 3.8 million followers. In his videos, Khan offers SAT, college, finance and tech guidance to students for free.
For students with fewer resources and college applications coming up in the fall, the influx of college guidance resources over the internet has made the process of applying to colleges more accessible.
