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Do PhD Admissions Committees “Google” Applicants?

Brian Leiter

A student applying to PhD programs writes:

I follow your blog, and I thought of a potentially useful topic for applicants to graduate schools. It is commonly believed (or at least feared) that Internet activity can influence one's chances of getting jobs and into colleges. Is it really a common practice for admissions people to Google the names of applicants and investigate, say, a blog under their name? Some people temporarily lock or otherwise remove all identifiable activity online during the admissions process. Is that advisable? Could a blog work for you if it's of sufficiently high quality?

 

This has some relevance to me, because I have a blog and have been applying to a few graduate programs. There's nothing particularly offensive on my blog, but it's fairly casual, sometimes sardonic, and definitely not a work of scholarship. How is this viewed by admission committees? Or does no one care?

My guess is that at the admissions stage, no one cares.  During the various times I have done PhD admissions, I can't ever recall googling an applicant.  At the hiring stage, I suspect things are more complex.  Someone who is risk-adverse would be well-advised not to blog or 'tweet' since easily accessible blogs or twitters always run the risk of overwhelming other information about a candidate, for a job or for admissions.  But at the admissions stage, my impression is that it doesn't much matter.  What do others think?  Signed comments preferred, as usual.  Submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.

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13 responses to “Do PhD Admissions Committees “Google” Applicants?”

  1. Matt Lister

    One reason to not do this is that the prospect for "false positives" (or negatives, I guess) is very high. I don't have a very common name, but if one googles me you'll spend some time picking out me from the other Matt Lister's on the web. I suppose that no one will mistake me for the 17th Century physician to Queen Anne, but there's also the classical guitarist, the British Olympic team member, the physicist, a medical doctor, and so on. Even beyond the fairly obvious cases there are likely to be lots of links that are not obvious. I'm sure this is even more so with people with more common last names than mine. Given this, I'd suspect the chance for false identification is fairly large, and since the gain is likely to be speculative, at best, it's probably better to just not do this.

    Reply
  2. Brian Ogilvie

    I'm in history, not philosophy, but I have never thought to google a graduate school applicant. Matt has a good point about false positives. If you google my name, you'll find a New York actor, a deceased saxophonist, and a few other people unless you add my middle initial, and even then, not all the hits are actually about me.

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  3. Mark van Roojen

    I think people have better things to do. Which is not to say that you won't find postings by applicants while one is looking for other things. That happens, though even then I can't see it would effect admissions unless you had done something really egregious.

    Reply
  4. Eric Chwang

    I've been on the graduate admissions committee for a few years now at my school, and I've never searched for an applicant's name online. Mainly the reason for this is that the activity is low yield–most applicants have no online footprint–compared to spending the same amount of time reading the file more closely.

    And even if I were to do it, it would be only in a very small proportion of the cases (like maybe 1-3), where I'm on the fence and need more information.

    Still, you *never know* what peculiarities your particular file-readers will have, so a precautionary principle would be to play it safe. The question pre-supposes that everyone on every graduate committee shares a common opinion on this, and that's false.

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  5. Kate Abramson

    no, have never googled a graduate applicant. [I think Brian's right that the faculty/hiring question is much more complex] The false positives in my own case aren't nearly so interesting, though there are quite a few. But come on Brian, I don't believe your not a deceased saxophonist. You say…

    Reply
  6. Michael Rosen

    So let me get this straight.

    The question is whether a committee that has maybe 200 serious applications to read in a four-week period while carrying on with teaching, administration and (perhaps even) family life will be likely to spend time doing possibly wholly irrelevant further research on candidates, beyond the fat dossiers they already have to read.

    I'm sorry if this is damaging to Brian's correspondent's self-esteem, but I think the answer's obvious: they're just not that into you.

    Reply
  7. Michael Kremer

    To answer the question: In my experience, no. For just the reasons others have already given.

    On false search results: I once had a note from a prospective student interested in philosophy of economics and extremely excited at the prospect of working with me. (Google my name.)

    Reply
  8. Eric Schliesser

    It depends on circumstances. I am busy filling a salaried PhD position in Ghent, Belgium on a personal grant. I had 45 applications. Once I narrowed it down to a long list, I did go check personal webpages, if available, of the students. First, to verify who they are. Second, to learn something about their interests and get some glimpses of their personality. I did not use it to assess philosophic ability.

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  9. Urizenus Sklar

    The thing with the internet is that nothing ever goes away so what you post today may come back and bite you ten years from now when you are up for a senior job and one person has issues with you and decides to stalk you in the google cache. Once when I was up for a senior position, a google image search by a member of the target university turned up a picture of me being silly at Metaphysical Mayhem, which led the stalker to conclude that I must be a "wild man." I'm not saying he was *wrong*, just that it is never too early to start thinking about these things.

    I suggest a nom de plume for controversial writings.

    Reply
  10. john doris

    It's worth noting the potential for disciplinary variation here. Perhaps philosophers seldom or never do this kind of checking, so for philosophy there's no risk in posting behaviors (wild parties, you latest ink, etc.), that might rub decision makers (who may be at a substantial cultural distance from you) the wrong way. But in disciplines that follow an "apprenticeship model," such as psychology, where a single faculty member may be (very closely) evaluating a very small number of applicants for admission to their lab, "googling" candidates does happen, and may be common. I've never done so myself (and am neither condemning nor condoning the practice), but beware that the potential may exist in some contexts. Were it me, and I had anything but a pretty bland professional web-page, I'd probably suspend it for any professional application.

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  11. anonymous grad student

    The committee might not care, but graduate students sometimes Google (/Facebook) prospective students who have been accepted (or waitlisted), usually before or around the time of the campus visit. When I applied to (philosophy) graduate school 4 years ago and went to do a campus visit at one of the schools at which I was accepted, another prospective student had been Googled by the graduate students in charge of the prospective student visitor weekend. That prospective student had written in his blog slightly disparaging/sarcastic things about the program directly prior to the visit, and the sense of animosity among the graduate students toward this fellow was unmistakable. They even trash-talked this guy to other prospective students!

    Of course, this did not affect his admission into the program. However, I imagine that if he ended up going there, the environment might have been (initially, at least) less than welcoming.

    Reply
  12. anonymous job seeker

    The practice of googling job candidates disturbs me because of false positives. Another person with my uncommon name is listed on an on-line roster of contributors to a very controversial political cause that I don't endorse and that most other philosophers would not endorse. I wonder what effect that might have on my job search.

    Reply
  13. varol akman

    I think online presences are important and sometimes as valuable as a dossier, if not more. And unlike dossiers, which all look alike, they say something about one's personality and style. And unless you are surfing under influence there's not a chance that you'll be looking at the wrong person. But obviously you should be working with a descriptive theory of names in order this to succeed 🙂

    Reply

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