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Social networking sites are constantly adapting to fit the needs of both high school and college students and now colleges are using these online communities as a resource as well. In The New York Times article Make New Friends Online, and You Won’t Start College Friendless,” Robert Alexander, assistant vice president of enrollment management at Tulane, said reading the group discussions in Facebook was a good way for the university to learn students interests and concerns. Tulane has created its own online group for admitted and prospective students as well.

Make New Friends Online, and You Won’t Start College Friendless

Monique Yin is months from starting her freshman year at New York University, but she has already chatted online with hundreds of classmates and met many of them, too.

As soon as Miss Yin, a 17-year-old high school senior from North Haven, Conn., received her acceptance letter in November through early decision, she logged onto Facebook, the social networking site, and created the group NYU 2011. She gave it this simple description: Join this group if you are attending NYU next fall.

So far, the group has more than 650 members incoming freshman from as far away as Belgium, Singapore and China, and ones from Long Island and Texas. By December, when Miss Yin attended a university orientation, classmates recognized her as the creator of the group. By February, 60 people from the group met in Washington Square Park. Later, some went ice-skating together; others shopped in Greenwich Village. This month, smaller groups have met in California and Philadelphia.

Facebook and other social networks like MySpace have transformed the social lives of teenagers in many ways, and that includes how they make the transition from high school to college. Hundreds of colleges have their own Class of 2011 groups on Facebook. They are generally not formally affiliated with the universities and are begun by students who want to connect with classmates months before they set foot on campus.

Facebook was originally available only to college students, and expanded to include high school students in September 2005. As soon as the first college acceptances began rolling in that fall, the first future college class groups appeared on Facebook. Click to read the rest of this article in its original context.