<p>But Chedva, your premise doesn't jive with all the data on IQ & math/science ability testing that shows men are the outliers. They will predominate in both the brightest & dullest region on any bell curve. Women are more concentrated in the middle. There will always be a larger pool of men qualified to succeed at an MIT than women. This doesn't mean that the women admitted are unqualiied; but it does mean that they were held to a lower admissions standard, as increasing their numbers was a goal. You can argue about whether this goal is a worthy one, but you can't pretend that women were not given a preference.</p>
<p>Rich: I like your idea!</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think it was incredibly cocky of Ms. Jones, but also a proof of how bureaucraticized for the worse our society has become if a college drop-out actually doing a sufficiently good job has her entire body of work deemed invalid over that fact.
[/quote]
I think there are a few posters incredulous that she could perform without credentials. I'm not so blown away by the difficulty of her job, though. I guess I know enough wildly successful, highly intelligent people with no college behind them to not be wedded to the notion that degrees = competence. The determination shown by the person earning the degree, and the discipline needed to gather the knowledge in a formal, structured path is valued. And I do value that discipline. But the actual knowledge, or competence, can be achieved without the formal journey. Jones did achieve competence. What bothers most people is her lack of integrity & honesty.</p>
<p>I don't quibble with her competence at all, but I find fraudulence and chicanery to be loathesome attributes. To me, the argument isn't about whether or not she was competent in her job, but the fact that she touted honesty in her applicants, while she had none hereself.</p>
<p>StickerShock, again, I disagree. Given the small number of females who applied to MIT as compared to males (~2000 v. ~7000), it is not hard at all to posit that these females were all high-achieving outliers, while some males were simply "middle of the pack" who figured, "Oh, what the heck - I'll apply to MIT even though I'm in the bottom of their range and see what happens." I'd bet that very few females at the bottom of MIT's range of admitted students even bother to apply.</p>
<p>My only point, however, was not that this is necessarily what happened in admitting the particular class in question, but is an alternative explanation to the immediate conclusion that there was discrimination involved. Unless we have the credentials of all the admitted students, so that we can in fact compare the admitted females' credentials against the admitted males', we cannot say that discrimination occurred.</p>
<p>And I'm not only bothered by Ms. Jones lack of integrity & honesty, but also with her hypocrisy in calling for honesty in others. (Just as I am appalled by some politicians' calls for revering the sanctity of marriage while cheating on their spouses.)</p>
<p>1) Yes, C is a very bad grade at Harvard these days. For that matter B- is pretty bad too, it is the current equivalent of the "gentleman's C."</p>
<p>2) Conisder two hypothetical candidates, one of whom is 100% certain to get B's and C's, and a second who has 90% chance of maintaining an A- or better average. Absent any other information I would prefer to admit the second student. YMMV.</p>
<p>As Mini is wont to say, there's got to be a bottom half. Even at Lake Wobegon. Even at Harvard. There's got to be someone with Cs, and even Ds. It does not mean that those in the bottom half do not belong at Lake Wobegon. Or at Harvard. It just means that the instructor decided to spread the grades to reflect differences in performance among excellent students.<br>
Furthermore, unless the student was clearly going to struggle but was admitted for extra-academic reasons (eg. parents major donors, celebrity status, major artistic achievements, etc...) there is no way of knowing whether a student is certain to get Bs and Cs and another mostly A-s. A dean who saw a grade sheet full of As and A-s would question the judgment of the instructor in both setting grades and the level of difficulty of the assignment.</p>
<p>Remember MIT's generous grading system for freshman. First quarter Freshman receive a "Pass" for all A, B, C's and there is nothing recorded for D's or F's. Second semester freshman receive an A, B, or C for those courses passed, but again no record made of any D or F. </p>
<p>So, yes, at least for freshman - failing is impossible at MIT.</p>
<p>Of course there has to be a bottom half in any distribution. At HarvArd this is the students with GPA's below B+; the fraction with GPA's below B- is neglible.</p>
<p>
[quote]
PS: "And the fraction of failures among all undergraduate grades remained at a two-decade low of 0.4 percent. "
[/quote]
I've never understood why people think Harvard would be a better school if more kids failed. Wouldn't that indicate that professors were doing a lousy job, or support services were lacking for kids who were struggling, or that they chose the wrong kids in the first place?</p>
<p>Reflectivemom: as an MIT alum (in the first year of the freshling P/F "experiment") and MIT parent ('07, admitted by you-know-who but also wait-listed by CalTech, so apparently well-qualified, despite being white and male), I know that it is quite possible to fail the first year at MIT. MIT's response to that is something called administrative leave, in which students are asked to take some time off before RESTARTING as first year students. This happens if students fail more than some number of credits. It is admittedly difficult to fail that many courses without setting off alarm bells first that start tutoring and other intervention programs. </p>
<p>Much of the intervention stuff is a response to past student suicides. For many MIT students, quite accustomed to being the best in their local environment, the shock of discovering they are merely ordinary or average at MIT is (quite literally) extremely depressing. (Some of us were simply thrilled to discover we could actually keep up our end of the conversation.)</p>
<p>One irony in all this talk claiming that less qualified women were admitted to MIT is that MIT has had a long, hard road dealing with discrimination against women faculty. There was a major report <a href="http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html%5B/url%5D">http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html</a> back in 1999 that chronicled poorer laboratory facilities for women scientists as compared to men, as well as other instances of gender discrimination. The study took account of grants and rank and other factors that could have explained differences and, when these were held constant, the differences in resources were attributable to gender discrimination. Since then, MIT has taken a hard look at its practices and has made significant improvements.</p>
<p>In 2007, 1,851 high-school girls qualified and took the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME). This same year, MIT admitted roughly 675 female students. Twenty years ago, few females entered the AIME contest, and only slightly over 2,000 students (mostly males) qualified. The reason MIT can enroll 45% females has nothing to do with gender discrimination. It has everything to do with the fact that more high-school females are enrolling in the top math classes. If you're interested in statistics, you can track the shift in high-school math enrollments at the National Center for Education Statistics. You can track the increasing numbers of females taking the AIME at <a href="http://www.unl.edu%5B/url%5D">http://www.unl.edu</a>. MIT this year admitted roughly 1,500 (they won't all attend) students, of which 45% are female. There's another measure of scientific talent, and perhaps a better one. In 2007, over 1,600 high-school students entered the Siemens Competition (formerly the Westinghouse Competition), and roughly half were female. The disturbing question for me is this: How did a discussion about Marilee Jones's lies and deceptions become a forum in which some on this board feel free to question the qualifications of female students at MIT? I conclude that those of you raising such questions have simply used this event as a pretext for airing your own biases.</p>
<p>QUOTE:
"How did a discussion about Marilee Jones's lies and deceptions become a forum in which some on this board feel free to question the qualifications of female students at MIT? I conclude that those of you raising such questions have simply used this event as a pretext for airing your own biases."</p>
<p>Agreed, CalAlum. (I was simply responding to the posts stating that there was obvious discrimination in favor of women, and there could be no other explanation.) I do not question the qualifications of any student, male or female, admitted to MIT, and I don't think that Jones' lies, lack of integrity or hypocrisy have cast doubt on the ability of MIT students to do the work required of them.</p>
<p>In the interest of full disclosure, I have a daughter who is not a math/science/technology kid, would not have applied to MIT if it were the only school available to her, and will be happy if she never has to take another math class in her life. I have no dog in this hunt.</p>
<p>CalAlum,
Amen!<br>
-- speaking as a parent of a son who is considering applying next year, but also as a parent who knows a lot of kids (male and female) who did (and didn't) get accepted to MIT.</p>
<p>Another cheer for CalAlum. And it's about time. </p>
<p>It is transparent that much of the preposterous attack on the MIT admission process in this thread has nothing to do with M. Jones troubles. The people complaining about all those supposedly unqualified admits would be saying exactly the same thing if Jones had every single degree she claimed. </p>
<p>(Disclosure just for the record: what Chevda said about his D applies exactly to mine.)</p>
<p>"It is transparent that much of the preposterous attack on the MIT admission process in this thread has nothing to do with M. Jones troubles."</p>
<p>I disagree. Most of the posts have everything to do with M. Jones troubles. It is preposterous to me that so many people are unwilling to "see" or even "admit" that when the head of admissions is found to be dishonest - the entire admissions process becomes "suspect". </p>
<p>This is very unfortunate for everyone involved. It is not the admitted students "fault". They have done nothing wrong.</p>
<p>It sounds to me like people are confusing two things:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Is everyone who gets into MIT qualified to be there? The answer most of the time is yes. They get such a talented and deep applicant pool that even if they don't admit the MOST qualified applicants (in terms of grades and scores) the people who get in are almost all still smart enough to attend and do well.</p></li>
<li><p>Is MIT looking at applicants in a gender (and race) neutral manner? - the answer is emphatically no. They are unabashedly engaging in social engineering - for example the male/female application admit ratios make this blatantly obvious. Females are admitted at a rate that is 2.5 times that of men. Maybe some of this could be explained by the fact that only the most dedicated females apply, the average female applicant is better qualified, etc. but I really doubt that this could explain a 2.5 to 1 ratio - the logical conclusion is that they are explicitly favoring female applicants in order to achieve a close to balanced sex ratio in the student body. Can anyone really say with a straight face that if they coded the applications in such a way that the gender and race of the applicants was not known to the committee that exactly the same people would get in? Of course not.</p></li>
<li><p>The question is then whether "Dr." Jones contributed to or created this policy - I'd say the answer is again no. The desire for "affirmative action" or "diversity" or whatever euphemism for deviation from a race and gender neutral admissions system is being used at the moment (since such schemes really go against basic American notions of fairness they have to keep getting renamed once their welcome wears out) is broad and deep in American academia if not in the broader society (see the recent Michigan situation - the voters voted against preferences, academia fought tooth and nail to keep them and is still plotting ways to get around the spirit of the law any way they can). Jones obviously was part of this trend practically from the moment of her hiring but she rode the bandwagon and did not build it. Now that she is off of it, I don't expect much to change because the fundamental underpinnings of the ideological system that promotes and values "positive discrimination" have not been undermined by this isolated incident. There are still many enablers - the same people who say "no one was hurt by Marilee's lies" (false - there was another person more deserving of her job who didn't get it) don't see that since the number of spots is basically fixed that for each person who is the beneficiary of "positive" discrimination there is another person who is hurt - there is no such thing as "positive" discrimination, only discrimination period.</p></li>
</ol>