<p>MIT's diverse student population is one of the reasons I prefer it to Caltech. I certainly hope that doesn't change.</p>
<p>^ completely agree. same reason i turned down harvard. at harvard people kept telling me that i should go there over MIT because of the people. luckily i found no shortage of amazingly smart talented and interesting people at MIT.</p>
<p>and like people have said, a lack of judgment 30 years ago does not signify any lack of vision or competence. If you disagreed with the admissions process beforehand, that's fine. but this should not discredit the work she's done in any way</p>
<p>
and like people have said, a lack of judgment 30 years ago does not signify any lack of vision or competence. If you disagreed with the admissions process beforehand, that's fine. but this should not discredit the work she's done in any way
</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it does. She claimed to be a trained scientist and therefore able to judge whether or not students should be admitted to MIT to become scientists and engineers. With maybe two years of college at the most and no degree, she certainly is not qualified in that capacity.</p>
<p>Also, it was not a "lack of judgment"; she did not just lie once and then let it quietly go to rest. She perpetuated her lies in the media, in future resumes, and in her admissions book, knowingly committing fraud.</p>
<p>Of course, she was not the only person reading applications, and I do not in any way mean to imply that this invalidates the right of any student to be at MIT. Again, it's a sad fact that there are many more students who deserve to be at MIT than there is room for them to attend. Still, it's worrying that someone with no adequate background had so much power over the process.</p>
<p>I don't think a scientist is necessarily any more competent at identifying young talent than a non-scientist. Achievement is achievement. Her job (the limited role she played in individual admissions) was not to read scientific papers submitted by the students and judge their merit, it was to gauge the level of curiosity and ambition present. Anyone can read numbers off a page and determine which one is higher, and I don't think you need a doctorate to look at an applicant's side engineering projects and see passion and potential.</p>
<p>This situation is ugly, yeah, and I think it may put to question many of the specific things she's said about her own experiences, but I don't think it undermines her accomplishment of having made a huge impact in a very controversial field.</p>
<p>
This situation is ugly, yeah, and I think it may put to question some of the specific things she's said about her own experiences, but I don't think it undermines her accomplishment of having made a huge impact in a very controversial field.
</p>
<p>I don't think anyone denies that she has made a huge impact. It's whether that's a good or a bad thing which is (obviously) still up for debate.</p>
<p>"I don't think anyone denies that she has made a huge impact. It's whether that's a good or a bad thing which is (obviously) still up for debate."</p>
<p>That doesn't make any sense... whether it's a good or bad thing has nothing to do with this. If you supported her policies before, you will continue to support them now- Marilee not having the degrees she claimed she has can't change a good policy into suddenly a bad policy or vice versa.</p>
<p>Despite Marilee Jones personal blunder, her efforts to recruit women and a more well rounded class have made MIT a better place. We are not a pure "tech" school. Otherwise, we would not have world famous professors in linguistics, Pulitzer prize winners in music, Nobel Prize winners in economics and a top ranked business school. It is because of our diversity that people choose MIT over Caltech and why we are considered along with HYPS as one of the world's great UNIVERSITIES.</p>
<p>Well, before, we thought that what she was doing was good-natured. Now, it seems everything was hypocritical. It's sometimes good to rethink things, pebbles, and I think this calls for some rethinking of whether or not we (by we, I mean you) were misled.</p>
<p>EDIT: Is Russ Pebbles' boyfriend or something? They have similar logic.</p>
<p>I vote "not at all" on the question in the opening post: first, admission goals are seldom set by the Dean of Admission. They're generally at the mercy of policies and admission quotas set by higher-ups: their academic deans, presidents, and ultimately boards of trustees. Second, admissions practices usually reflect broad institutional values, not the vision of a sinlge person.</p>
<p>"Well, before, we thought that what she was doing was good-natured. Now, it seems everything was hypocritical."</p>
<p>But my point was, impact is impact. I'm not going to speculate on why she believed what she believed (I don't believe there was any bad intentions there. She falsified her information 30 years ago, for god's sake, a lot can change in 30 years.). To suddenly use her situation as leverage for why her policies over the past 10 years were bad just doesn't make any logical sense. Who cares what her intentions were? Our job isn't to pass Final Judgment on anyone, our job is to look at what she has done for the academic circle, as that's the only thing that will impact us.</p>
<p>"Our job isn't to pass Final Judgment on anyone, our job is to look at what she has done for the academic circle, as that's the only thing that will impact us."</p>
<p>It is always nice to have someone who defines what "our" job is for us. How could we pass judgment on someone who has falsified their academic credentials and deprived another person who was truly qualified from becoming the dean of admissions as MIT? Why can't we all say we have degrees from whatever college we want as long as it is thirty years ago? I wonder if twenty years works? What about ten? Where exactly is the line where fraud becomes acceptable?</p>
<p>The fraud is current, not 28 years ago. It may have started 28 years ago, but choosing to put it on a book jacket that people were buying yesterday, means that she it profiting from it right now!</p>
<p>Phuriku:</p>
<p>I would be honored to be Pebble's boyfriend. Sadly, during my time at MIT, I didn't have a chance to meet a great MIT girl. So I ended up dating a Wellesley girl and marrying a Yale girl. Perhaps that's why I'm such a big supporter of improving the gender balance. :)</p>
<p>We're all well aware of what's in the news, judahlevi, thanks.</p>
<p>:/ Look, I'm not defending her actions, just discussing the possibility that she may not be the devil</p>
<p>Come on people. Her lying about one thing doesn't make all her policies bad, that's just ****ing stupid. It's a very ad hominem way of debating. I'm firmly with pebbles here - either you liked her policies or you didn't; this really shouldn't change your views. Might change her motivations (I doubt it) but that's not really germane to what anyone else thinks about the policies, is it?</p>
<p>"Her lying about one thing doesn't make all her policies bad, ... "</p>
<p>We were getting off track, but the problem might be that right now we don't know whether she was lying about just one thing, or maybe more things. Even if it was just that one thing, it seems like a huge thing to live with every day. So did that one lie have other effects: did it affect how she felt about credentials in general? Did she resent that people but a premium on credentials? We don't know, but I can see why you might start to link the lies with the policies....</p>
<p>
[quote]
I would be honored to be Pebble's boyfriend. Sadly, during my time at MIT, I didn't have a chance to meet a great MIT girl. So I ended up dating a Wellesley girl and marrying a Yale girl. Perhaps that's why I'm such a big supporter of improving the gender balance.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I never understand people like you. You'd cheat a deserving male out of a spot just so that you could have a undeserving female around that you could have fun with. Great policy... it sounds really fair!</p>
<p>I'm *<strong><em>ing sick of the male being discriminated against because of *</em></strong> like this.</p>
<p>In any case, call me crazy, but I'm writing a rebuttal to my rejection from MIT. I have a number of people who I'll be representing with a single e-mail to the new dean of admissions. It will be polite and it will be a request to reevaluate the rejected applications of everyone who wants to be represented by the e-mail. Anyone who wants to be represented drop me a PM.</p>
<p>The reason? We believe that the reason certain applicants were admitted was because they fit Jones' idea of the ideal student, herself -- an underrepresented group with less than great statistics. I've seen many such people get admitted, and I've seen many really intelligent females with very good statistics get denied, which was at first confusing, but now it seems to make sense. I've seen the same thing with minorities -- the minorities with the higher stats seem to be the ones denied.</p>
<p>I think a lot of us feel cheated, and although I'll probably get a lot of **** from current MIT students or people who haven't been denied (I'll be called immature, most likely, and I'll be told to let it go), I'm doing this anyway. My friends and I all feel we have been cheated out of our rightful spots in MIT's class of '11 due to Jones' behavior, which may have been due to the lack of her own credentials.</p>
<p>I think if you did that, you might get a personal kick in the face from me. All the way in Indianapoilis, Indiana. </p>
<p>Are you seriously trying to reap personal benefits from this extremely difficult situation for the Admissions Department? I don't know if there's a blacklist for colleges, but I'd be pretty scared of it if I were you.</p>
<p>Quote:
<<agree with="" cadreams.="" the="" admissions="" process="" should="" become="" like="" caltech's.="" only="" scores,="" gpa,="" and="" math="" science="" ecs="" count.="" i'd="" understand="" if="" they="" gave="" a="" break="" to="" disadvantaged="" but="" no="" touchy="" feel="" bs.="">></agree></p>
<p>Freshman admission (from CDS)</p>
<p>---------------------------- Caltech -------------------------- MIT<br>
----------------- Applied -- Admitted ---- % :::::::: Applied -- Admitted ---- %</p>
<p>2002-03 Men ...... 2014 ------ 373 ---- 18.52% ------ NA -------- NA -------NA
-------- Women ... 601 ------ 187 ---- 31.11% ------ NA -------- NA -------NA </p>
<p>2003-04 Men ...... 2407 ------ 337 ---- 14.00% ----- 7651 ------ 885 ---- 11.57%
-------- Women ... 664 ------ 183 ---- 27.56% ----- 2898 ------ 850 ---- 29.33%</p>
<p>2004-05 Men ...... 2120 ------ 374 ---- 17.64% ----- 7669 ------ 898 ---- 11.71%
-------- Women ... 641 ------ 192 ---- 29.95% ----- 2797 ------ 767 ---- 27.42%</p>
<p>2005-06 Men ........ NA ------- NA ------ NA -------- 7608 ------ 758 ----- 9.96%
-------- Women .... NA ------- NA ------ NA -------- 2832 ------ 736 ---- 25.99%</p>