I don’t know many high school students other than those in my immediate family, but the high school students I do know are often able to get a good idea about what college life is all about based on the photos shared by their college-age friends on Facebook.  But if this isn’t enough, the CheckMyCampus application could shed some light on what really goes down during those formidable college years.  A finalist in the fbFund competitive round, CheckMyCampus offers a media “viewing station” to provide first hand accounts of how awesome college life is across the nation. Facebook users can upload videos and images to show their own perspective of college life.  The ultimate goal of CheckMyCampus is to give high school students a realistic portrayal of life on a college campus.

There are some interesting checks and balances that CheckMyCampus has instilled, to ensure that uploaded content is in fact useful for the application’s purposes.  For instance, a user wanting to upload content of any kind will need to be associated with a college on Facebook.  That means that you’ll need to have one of those handy .edu email addresses registered with your Facebook account.  At first this seemed limiting, as there are those users that may have gone to a college but don’t have an alumni email account.  But even with this particular restriction, CheckMyCampus is still encouraging fresh and up-to-date content to be added to its application.

Once you’re able to add content, however, the process is fairly simple. Videos can be uploaded directly, and images can be imported from your Facebook albums. While the image import is convenient, having an image upload would broaden the amount of photos that could be shared to the application.  And the lack of a video import option appears to be part of CheckMyCampus’ business model, as original content is requested, and ads are placed on the CheckMyCampus video player.

Aside from the various features on CheckMyCampus, the only major concern I have is the type of content that could be shared through this application. Could there be a downside to college students showing videos of beer pong, and talking about getting hammered while watching the game? Though most college students hit the legal drinking age while in school, there are those that may concerned about the underage students in college, as well as the high school students viewing content on this app.

Nevertheless, a first-hand perspective of college life wrapped nicely in a Facebook application is actually quite helpful, as the real-life ramifications of a given campus are often the true deciding factors for a high school student picking a college.  Having a physical extension of CheckMyCampus, such as organized groups on various campuses for setting up interviews and tours, could become a potential avenue for growth as well.

If you enjoy the application, go vote for Check My Campus.