It may not happen frequently, but some admissions officers from the nation’s top colleges and universities do check out what applicants post on their social networking Web sites as part of the admissions decision-making process, according to a new survey by Kaplan Inc.

Kaplan’s fifth annual college admissions officers survey, administered to 320 admissions officers, shows that one out of 10 pay attention to comments appearing on sites like Facebook. While a quarter of them say that what they see has a positive impact on their evaluations, 38 percent say otherwise.

In one case, a student bragged online that he felt he had aced the application for a school even though he didn’t really want to go there. The comments led the admissions officer to reject the applicant.

Separate research from Kaplan indicates that most parents of high school students think admissions officials' looking at social networking sites when evaluating applicants is unfair.

Donna Winchester, higher education reporter

*