Daily Aid 109: Managing your reputation online

Student Financial Aid News

From the Chronicle:

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is closing its online-education grant program, a foundation official has told The Chronicle. Some college officials are concerned that the decision will leave a fast-growing sector of American higher education without a major source of support. The New York City-based foundation has funneled roughly $80-million into online-education ventures around the country since the early 1990s.

Commentary

Online degrees are indeed taking a hit from this closure, which is unfortunate but understandable in these times. However, it’s worth reminding and pointing out that if you take an online degree from any Title IV accredited school, you can apply for and possibly receive all the regular forms of financial aid such as Pell Grants, Stafford loans, etc. as long as you meet eligibility requirements. Of course, there are plenty of online degree scholarships as well besides the Sloan grants.

Scholarship Update

Play City, a campaign created by YouthNoise in partnership with Nike, is giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “Be a good sport.” We believe sports have the power to energize individuals, revitalize communities and catalyze change in the world. The question we want you to answer is: “What Do You Play For?” We want to know how you are using sports to make a difference in your life, your community or the world as a whole. Submit a photo that clearly demonstrates how you are using sports to make an impact, and tell us in detail what cause or purpose you play for. Whether you play basketball to stay happy and healthy, run marathons to benefit local charities or coach soccer to empower young women, we want to hear your story. You could win the grand prize of $500 cash or scholarship!

Details at our free college scholarship search site.

Jobcast/News You Can Use

Let’s talk about online reputation real quick.

We’ve all had those college experiences that were fun and funny at the time but kind of embarrassing later on. The stories I could tell you about my undergraduate days would fill a small book and you’d leave shaking your head. Sound familiar? The difference between previous generations of students and today’s students is this, in one word:

Google.

Google doesn’t forget. Once it indexes something, it never forgets. Even if you take down a web page or change a photo, Google or one of the other major search services is constantly copying, archiving, and recording everything, all the time.

This photo is a good example. At the time, it was probably funny.

A couple of years down the road, if this person (who I don’t know) applies for a job and their name was attached to this photo, they might have some explaining to do in an interview, or worse yet, never get the interview and would never know WHY they were denied the opportunity.

So what do you do to still have a life and some adventures to retell down the road, but not sabotage your future? Here’s a 3 step recipe.

1. Don’t put up things online you don’t want to be found. At the very least, check out and restrict your privacy settings on social network and media sites like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitpic, etc. so that the world can’t see everything, or even the majority of things. Ideally, avoid placing anything embarrassing online at all, since even the best privacy settings get messed up over time.

2. Take down anything you don’t want to be found. This is especially important to ask of friends who post photos and videos from parties, etc. Obviously, if at all possible, avoid putting yourself in those situations to begin with, but at the very least, ask friends to take down anything you don’t want to have seen.

3. Flood the Internet with content you do want to be found. This is where having lots of obvious bait is important. Considering working in healthcare? Start a healthcare blog and make sure your name is prominent in it so that anyone Googling for you in a few months or years finds what you want them to find. Take appropriate photos and post them up with your name and personal URL.

Here, for example, is a picture of my barbecue. Boring, right?

If you look in the description on Flickr, you’ll find links to the Financial Aid Podcast and other attributes that I want you to find. I want you to know that I own a digital camera and use it frequently, that I blog about financial aid, paying for college, online degrees, student credit cards, marketing, podcasting, and much more.

I want you to find all that stuff, because in this day and age, having a complete vacuum associated with your name is almost as bad as having drunk party photos out there. Searching Google for your name and coming up with nothing makes me wonder what you’re hiding, and speaking as a hiring manager at an Internet-savvy company, a Google result of zero means you don’t know the marketplace we want to serve, and thus you’re a less desirable hire.

Google yourself. Check yourself out on MySpace, Facebook, or wherever you have a profile, and honestly ask yourself what kind of impression you create. If it’s not what you want, then take some time to reshape your digital life so that you create exactly the perception you want to create.

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Reminders

+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidNews.com.
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook
+ Online degrees programs and directories at Edvisors.com
+ Free college scholarships contests!
+ Stafford loans | Other federal student loans
+ Parent PLUS loans at ParentPLUSLoan.com
+ Graduate student loans
+ Private student loans
+ FAFSA tutorials and free help
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.