College admissions officers have learned to check applicants’ Facebook profiles, and what they see there can have a negative impact on the students’ chances. Guess what? The kids are a step ahead of them.

Parents, teachers and guidance counselors warn high school students that what they post on Facebook could hurt their chances of getting into college. And according to a Kaplan survey of college admissions officials released last week, it’s not an idle threat: More than one in four respondents said they check Google and Facebook for information on applicants, up from one in 10 when Kaplan started tracking the trend in 2008.

Of those who check, 35% said they have found information that negatively impacted an applicant’s chance of acceptance, up from 12% last year.

“It doesn’t matter,” my 15-year-old niece said over dinner last weekend. “The seniors in my school just hide their profiles or make up a new name and then change it back when they get accepted to college.”

It’s not just the students at her school. My own college-aged students, students at other high schools, and teachers and guidance counselors say that hiding profiles under aliases is just one of the tricks students use to dodge scrutiny during the college application season. Some deactivate profiles, others amp up their privacy settings. And still others are set up a second Facebook profile they call their “ideal self” account.

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