How do you think Marilee JOnes' resignation will affect the MIT admissions process?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>From what I have seen at our high school, in general the MIT female applicants might be much more self selective than the males.</p>

62

<p>


Judging achievement and potential in science hardly comes down to "reading numbers off a page", and I really think you're dismissing the importance of comparing different indicators of success and potential. This is especially concerning, for her, because under her tenure, MIT admissions shifted away from pure academics to other indicators of potential. I'm not saying that's wrong, not good, etc., but that shift is more likely to be supported from someone who didn't go through a technical education.</p>

<p>I also think you're understating the importance of the dean of admissions in that she largely sets the tone for the office and . I don't know the specifics of her role, but I highly suspect that most people are understating the influence she had on admissions - people seemed to be claiming how she revolutionized MIT's admissions before this came out, and now I just hear about how she was only one individual with a charter from the trustees, etc.. I'm interested to hear how her influence is evaluated in the coming weeks.</p>

<p>


I think it's probably too soon to say one way or the other.</p>

63

<p>You know what I have realized? You guys aren't answering the question. The question is not, what kind of person was Jones? Nor is it even, do you agree with the policies? The question is, and I quote "How do you think Marilee Jones' resignation will affect the MIT admissions process?"</p>

64

<p>Answer: It won't. Not without a long a difficult struggle.</p>

65

<p>I thought we answered that long ago. Not much.</p>

66

<p>My son got rejected by MIT but got into a no. of other top schools. MIT is a tech school, contrary to what someone wrote. Most students graduate in science, engineering or economics and few go there to study medieval history. One can disagree with admissions philosophy, even mission of school and be perfectly at home at the school. As an extreme example, the ivies and MIT want change agents, leaders, etc and one can go to them and retreat to the garret to translate Catullus or write poetry. It is not possible to even come close to ascertaining "fit" and "match" from reading college apps. I am a clinical psychologist and after perusing test reports and court reports and extensive life histories and family interviews psychologists are still not very good at predicting future behavior. Admissions officers, after reading apps for 30 mins, make tall claims that are silly. Statistical or actuarial prediction is superior to clinical prediction in clinical psych and I would wager it holds true for academic predictions as well. That is why GPAs and SAT scores should count more. From science to business smarts is what makes the difference. There are any no. of articles in the business world on what makes a leader: smarts trumps all other factors. These colleges make the process subjective to fit their sociopolitical agendas. The true impact of Jones will not be known for another 5 decades. The immediate impact is known: more females, lower accept rates, higher USNews rankings. The impact on science and tech and innovation will be known much much later. I agree with Nogarder that Jones probably did a huge disservice in arrogating to herself the idea of who a good MIT student is. Someone who has not earned a basic college degree is more susceptible to marketing, persuasion, contemporary fads and less resistant to administrators' agendas and hence more likely to yield to institutional pressures. If a good college experience teaches critical thinking, lack of such experience makes one more susceptible to cognitive fallacies. If she had applied her ideology to the Indian Inst of Tech, she would have destroyed Indian engineering by denying the high achievers and letting in cricketers. Silicon Valley would not be what it is today.</p>

67

<p>"Everybody makes mistakes. The key to being happy in life is to somehow make peace with that."</p>

<p>Well, she certainly made 28 years of peace, didn't she? This exerpt comes from the end of her blog about the confetti-tube fiasco which hurt my family. She will be a great teacher on how to make peace with FRAUD. </p>

<p>I have to wonder... did she counsel her daughter to "pad" her college apps? I bet the administrators of the college Nora goes to will be pouring over her app.</p>

<p>I also have to wonder... how many other workers at MIT haven't been properly vetted or have very important background checks done -- how safe is my student, really?</p>

<p>I urge you all to go to CC Parents and read that blog, too.</p>

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<p>ramaswami - I appreciate your thoughts. </p>

<p>Even if an application IS given a thirty minute read, it cannot possibly be afforded the active shelf life it deserves with the number of applications skyrocketing in the twenty thousands.</p>

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<p>By all objective admission criteria (class rank, SAT scores, etc.) MIT remains at or near the top of all universities. However, attracting people with strengths other than perfect SAT scores makes the university stronger. Unfortunately, the harcore image that some people would like to see promoted will make MIT lose qualified people:</p>

<p>My colleague's daughter was accepted by Princeton this year. During earlier conversations she had with me, she was most interested in MIT because of her interest in science. (It was also her mom's dream school). However, after attending an MIT information session last year, she was frustrated because the q and a session was dominated by people asking questions like "how much upper level college math should students take before coming to MIT". She ended up not applying to MIT because of this despite my reassurances that there is a diversity of students who exist at MIT.</p>

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<p>"With colleges demanding kids who play sports, run student government and take the heaviest course load they can, Jones shouted back the opposite: daydream, stay healthy, and don't worry so much about building a resume just to impress an elite college."</p>

<p>"Of course she shouts that; she was probably a slacker who didn't take the heaviest course loads or extracurriculars. She tells others to "daydream" and that credentials are not that important because she doesn't have any. Someone like her having a say on who is admitted to MIT or not contaminates the whole admissions process because she has no idea what a scholar is. Her flawed leadership probably influenced the rejection of many qualified applicants for unqualified ones. I hope she gets sued for fraud and has to go to prison or is fined heavily."</p>

<p>Agreed...completely.</p>

71

<p>
[quote]
Originally Posted by pebbles
I don't think a scientist is necessarily any more competent at identifying young talent than a non-scientist. Achievement is achievement.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I can't find the original post of pebbles which cghen replies to in #62, but I will back him up 100%. It's completely, COMPLETELY, nuts (pebbles) to suggest that people who have never proved a theorem or devised an experiment can, with any degree of reliability, discern whether someone "gets it" about science. Or tell whether a "passionate" essay reflects a genuine and subtle engagement with the discipline or merely combines words in a way that succeeds at snowing a layman. I can trick an English major about passion in math any day, and you know it, too.</p>

<p>Another thing that is quite mysterious (in a very amusing way) is that now pebbles, of all people!, and compatriot defenders of holistic MIT admissions, talk about how
[quote]
anyone can read numbers off a page and determine which one is higher.

[/quote]
Is that what it's suddenly about? Because I had thought it was about peering deep beyond the numbers and discerning the true creative souls from the textureless grinds. I would be fine entrusting admissions to a beagle (or UC Berkeley) if it was about picking the higher number, but presumably your whole point all these years is that it's NOT about that.</p>

<p>People who take it upon themselves to trade off vibrancy and character and watercolor painting against the ability to sit on your ass proving a theorem should have some personal experience about what each of those things is like. Especially people who set policy about how to make those tradeoffs (which was undisputedly Marilee's role).</p>

<p>In this sense, I think you must admit MIT admissions suffered from having a person who was in the dark about science at the helm. Please let's be honest with ourselves about that. Surprisingly, Marilee managed to do a lot of good anyway -- in particular, perhaps she convinced a parent or two to back off, and that alone is worth a lot. But the process was certainly compromised by her leadership.</p>

<p>Incidentally, my issue in this post is not exactly that about the fraud; had it been an English major with no scientific training at the helm, the situation would have been equally bad...</p>

<p>In any case, MIT's values are consistent with mine, since they thought they did have a scientist sitting in that chair. The point of this post is to smack the ridiculous fiction that someone who is not a scientist can competently set policy about choosing the best scientists.</p>

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<p>Ben, please. Why the elistism? And why all the freaking angst? You're a graduating senior from Caltech, yeah, okay you're entitled to feel pretty good about yourself as a scientist. But graduating seniors from high school?? My point is that 17 year olds are not SCIENTISTS. They COULD BE, and some WILL BE, but they are not applying as scientists who ought to be evaluated by other scientists in the field. Bright kids are bright kids. Bright kids can be molded in every which way, I challenge you, if you're so confident about this, to list the exact qualities in our TEENAGERS of all people to make a "good scientist"- no more, no less. And show that those are not the same characteristics listed under every MIT Admissions reading material. Besides, it's not so cookie-cutter simple. Scientists can come from theater majors, scientists can come from slackers who haven't tapped into their potential, scientists can come from book-eating social loners. Yeah, some kid could have crazy passion in math and send in a paper to "fool the English major" Dean:</p>

<p>But you also know well that any papers they submit for review are sent directly to people in those FIELDS to review. Any explicit mention of technical interest in a particular field and those people (and yeah! a lot of them work in the admissions department, too) are summoned for verification. Even if your dean is a log, and just sits in the corner of the office and drips water on everything, applicants would know better than to try to trick the MIT admissions office into believe they had some kind of fake passion in math.</p>

<p>Also, "anyone can read numbers off a page and determine which one is higher." this was a jab at the love-affair people have with "meritocratic" admissions and why that could not have been affected.</p>

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<p>pebbles, you are 17+3, and I am 17+4. We're not so far from 17, and I just don't buy the claim that MIT admits tabula rasa smart teenagers to mold. I used to read applications at Caltech and some of these people already have more sheer mathematical power than many professional mathematicians. If you doubt this is true, PM me and I'll tell you what freshmen to visit at MIT.</p>

<p>I think your basic line of argument applies well to preschool -- that at that stage, all you need is compassionate, reasonably intelligent people to help guide kids who are basically just kids.</p>

<p>When they're applying to college, these people are fairly mature, and precisely one of the tradeoffs to be made is the one beteween mature scientific talent in some people and undeveloped potential in others. Nonscientists are not equipped to make this tradeoff or decide how best to make it because they only have a very foggy idea about the difference between a song about rainbows and a proof of a combinatorial conjecture. Even if you get independent reports on the latter, you still have to compare the former and the latter in value, and that's exactly what admissions (not the scientist evaluator) does.</p>

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<p>Look, I didn't claim to be no scientist. I think I'm very much in the raw still. Sure, SOME people might have had the opportunities available to them to have already reached their potential as young adults applying to colleges, but, to me, it seems at least, they are the minority, not the majority. Maybe it's just me, and looking around me, but the ONLY (ONE!) person in my high school (of 2500) who had developed his talents really to the extent that you believe common (taken a serious interest in something academic, developed mathematical prowess, competed and been successful in competitions, won awards, whatever) was the son of a Harvard and an MIT grad (who was my parents' boss's boss). (by the way he got into MIT) You COULD argue that people who haven't (for whatever reason/circumstance) tapped into their potential at that point is just too late (will never develop into leaders of their field) and you might be right, but I don't think that's fair grounds to take away someone's opportunity to try.</p>

<p>Yeah, I concede your point about scientists, perhaps it's because I'm in such an environment, but sometimes I do feel like our elitism as scientists and assumption that no one who hasn't studied what we've studied will have even the SLIGHTEST clue what is talent and what is fraud might be a little extreme. Since the counter is definitely not true. To say that scientists are without a doubt completely clueless about what is a good poem and what is a bad poem is patently false.</p>

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<p>pebbles pebbles I hope you didn't misunderstand. I don't mean that only those with pre-existing mature abilities should be admitted. (I wouldn't have gotten into Caltech by that standard.) Only that it is a serious question how to compare the IMO medalist and published mathematician to the apparently enthusiastic and promising kid from a rural school with no such opportunities... and I do think there should be lots of input by scientists into how to make that tradeoff, and it's crucial that it be informed by their perspective as scientists (as well as compassionate human beings etc.). But I think in any reasonable way of doing it would take lots of the raw kind like you and me.</p>

<p>And I agree that people can have serious and valuable thoughts about things outside the topics that they studied formally... but I think your converse at the end ('scientists are without a doubt completely clueless about what is a good poem and what is a bad poem') is not exactly a fair way to turn it around. I think a fairer way to take the converse of my point would be to say: </p>

<p>professional mathematicians with no substantial training or experience with poetry are not the best people to evaluate applications to a writing school, nor to decide how to trade off the accomplishments of published writers with classical training versus those of people whose high school English teachers never taught a serious poem.</p>

<p>I think (hope?) you'd agree.</p>

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<p>My daughter chose MIT over Caltech, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. She didn't even apply to Caltech, because it was clear during her tour on the campus, that the students didn't have much of a social life. Given the stories told by many of her female friends going to top universities, I think more girls self-select MIT over Caltech, so the percentages are meaningless in terms of academic qualifications. In sort, Caltech has proportionally fewer girls because proportionally fewer qualified girls apply.</p>

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<p>Edit: this post is directed at Ben.</p>

<p>Okay, we're on the same page regarding that. I don't believe Women's History professors should be admitting Math grad students either. Where we differ, clearly, and this is kind of irresolvable, is what we view the undergrad admissions dean's role to be. I think of her as more of a liaison between the administration and the admissions counselors than a champion for math and science, and I think of MIT admissions as more of a collaborative process where people of all fields come together and share their experiences where necessary than something that is necessarily dictated by the dean. In addition, I find MIT to be more well-rounded in its educational goals than you do. This, I guess, is why I believe the "requirement" for the dean of MIT to be a scientist is more of a PR thing than anything of real necessity.</p>

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<p>05-'06 CalTech Common Data Set </p>

<p>Total first-time, first-year (freshman) men who applied <strong>2,120</strong>_
Total first-time, first-year (freshman) women who applied _<strong><em>641</em></strong></p>

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<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2006/c.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2006/c.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>From the MIT 05-06 Common data set and the Caltech 04-05 data set we have:
<a href="http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2006/c.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2006/c.html&lt;/a>
<a href="http://finance.caltech.edu/budget/cds2005.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://finance.caltech.edu/budget/cds2005.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>MIT:
Male Applicants: 7,608
Female Applicants: 2,832
Male to Female Appicant Ratio: 2.70 to 1
Male Acceptances: 758
Female Acceptances: 736
Male to Female Acceptance Ratio: 1.03 to 1</p>

<p>Caltech:
Male Applicants: 2,120
Female Applicants: 641
Male to Female Appicant Ratio: 3.30 to 1
Male Acceptances: 374
Female Acceptances: 192
Male to Female Acceptance Ratio: 1.95 to 1</p>

<p>A few things to note from these numbers:


This is true, but I don't think it's as large of an effect as you're suggesting. 3.3:1 vs. 2.7:1 - clearly both schools have problems attracting female applicants.</p>

<p>The reason people say that MIT considers sex in admissions is because how remarkable close their acceptances are to reaching a 1:1 ratio; do you really think that is likely to occur on its own given the 2.7:1 ratio in applicants? Clearly, there are strong effects from self-selection (as Caltech accepts females at a higher rate than males with specifically NOT considering gender for admissions), but that's still (unfortunately) unlikely to be that close in today's world where there are still tragically some historical stigmas for women to pursue math and science. </p>

<p>


Hmm, let's think about this. Caltech's yield (from this data set) is 36.5 percent (not including inflation from the waitlist), and so Caltech needs to admit 566 people to fill it's class of 207 people. Let's say that Caltech pursued MIT's admission policy of admitting males and females in an equal ratio: i.e. Caltech were to admit 283 females and 283 males. Caltech's current yield on female applicants is 30.0 percent, and assuming that it would remain constant with such a change (it would actually likely go up), then Caltech would have 85 female's matriculate.</p>

<p>That would make Caltech 41.0 percent female opposed to MIT at 46.7 percent. MIT's rate is still higher, of course (this is actually do to higher female yield at MIT, which could be for the reasons you speculate), but those numbers are more much more comparable than how they are right now (28.5 percent vs. 46.7 percent female matriculation).</p>

<p>Let me also note that 2004-2005 was an especially bad year for Caltech in terms of female matriculation (for a variety of tangible reasons). If we look at the 2003-2004 data (<a href="http://finance.caltech.edu/budget/cds2004.pdf)%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://finance.caltech.edu/budget/cds2004.pdf)&lt;/a>, a similar analysis would give a female matriculating percentage of 47.0 percent which is remarkably similar to MIT's percentage.</p>

<p>Doing the same for Caltech from 2002-2003 gives a female matriculating percentage of 43.2 percent (<a href="http://finance.caltech.edu/budget/cds2002.pdf)%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://finance.caltech.edu/budget/cds2002.pdf)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p>

<p>Hence, it seems that it's not self-selection which is determining the composition of MIT's class vs. Caltech's so much as it is MIT's desire to admit an equal percentage of female and male applicants.</p>

<p>There are a couple of shady things in what I've done, to be fair. Specifically, for Caltech to create an equal number of male and female acceptances, it would have a more difficult time than MIT because MIT does get a bit higher female application rate. I suspect, though, that this is also tied to MITs known admission policies, and I would expect that more females would apply to Caltech if they followed similar policies as MIT.</p>

<p>Also, let me clarifiy that I don't really have any problems with MITs admission policies regarding women, and I'd NEVER argue that MIT female admits aren't qualified (whatever that means). As I see it, MIT has different priorities than Caltech, and each school's admission policies closely follow the institutions objectives. I do think, though, that it's a little naive/crazy to not at least awknowledge that MIT admissions makes a significant effort to balance the gender distribution of its matriculating class.</p>