<p>"According to whom? MIT is a private institution which is entitled to admit students according to whatever rubric they choose."</p>
<p>sjmom2329 - have you been out of the country for the 50 years? We have numerous federal, state, and local laws that outlaw discrimination on a number of abritray characteristics including sex. MIT is NOT entitled to admit students on ANY basis it chooses.</p>
<p>Maybe the kids at our high school would have been better off if the teachers had ignored the form too. Three kids applied none got in. They all got into other fine schools though. In fact the girl among them got into Caltech. :)</p>
<p>"My son's teachers didn't bother to fill in that form two years ago, they just sent the letter they would have sent to any other school, as they did for all students applying to MIT. My son was admitted, as were 12 other students from his class, and 16 students in the two classes since his. It's not a requirement for teachers to fill in that form."</p>
<p>Interesting! The teacher evaluation form distinctly states - "If you'd prefer to attach your own letter instead of filling out this form, that's fine with us. WE ASK SIMPLY THAT YOU COMPLETE THE CHECK BOXES ON THE FIRST PAGE AND THAT YOUR LETTER ADDRESSES THE GENERAL NATURE OF OUR QUESTIONS...</p>
<p>So, you are saying that your teachers didn't follow the instructions on the evaluation forms and the kids were still admitted. </p>
<p>Guess an admissions director who doesn't follow the rules can overlook the rules and standard applications when they so choose?? And, you wonder why people are questioning her admission decisIons? </p>
<p>Why am I not surprised?</p>
<p>{crossposted with mathmom - similar conclusion}</p>
<p>percy skivins I am referring to the post that said that artists, dreamers and actors may have written more touchy feely essays and that Marilee Jones may have prefered these. </p>
<p>First of all I am not at all sure that this particular group of people would be any more inclined to write touchy feely essays than anyone else and I'm not convinced that Marilee Jones liked touchy feely essays.</p>
<p>My son is an artist, he goes to MIT and he did not and never would write a touchy feely essay. He wrote an essay about physics.</p>
<p>reflectivemom wrote: "So, you are saying that your teachers didn't follow the instructions on the evaluation forms and the kids were still admitted. Guess an admissions director who doesn't follow the rules can overlook the rules and standard applications when they so choose?? And, you wonder why people are questioning her admission decisIons?"</p>
<pre><code> *****************
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<p>Having written letters of recommendation for law school and grad school, it's always been my impression that it is more effective to craft a letter that addresses the criteria highlighted by various boxes than to go ahead and check those boxes -- and I have never lied about my degrees or publications.</p>
<p>"My son's teachers didn't bother to fill in that form two years ago, they just sent the letter they would have sent to any other school, as they did for all students applying to MIT. "</p>
<p>While I haven't seen MIT's recommendation forms, all of the college and graduate school forms that I have seen have given teachers/profs the option of writing letters instead of filling out the schools' forms. That makes sense to me as a well written letter will provide more information. In addition, with students each applying to up to 20 colleges, teachers don't have time to fill out individual forms for each college.</p>
<p>A well crafted "To Whom It May Concern" letter works fine.</p>
<p>Check out Marilee at the Battle of the Bands.
Scroll down to see her belting out a song.
<a href="http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/life/music_the_arts/the_secret_life_of_marilee_jon.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/life/music_the_arts/the_secret_life_of_marilee_jon.shtml</a></p>
<p>This year her song was "You can't aways get what you want" by the Rolling Stones.
<a href="http://web.mit.edu/zbt/www/botb2007/bands.htm%5B/url%5D">http://web.mit.edu/zbt/www/botb2007/bands.htm</a>
Someone needs to post a recording of her singing the lyrics </p>
<p>"She was practiced at the art of deception" </p>
<p>Especially since it was probably her last appearance at CPW.</p>
<p>So Andi and Northstarmom,</p>
<p>If you read the above instructions - which were copied verbatim from the MIT evaluation form - you would ignore them? Even when it clearly stated that you were to "complete the check boxes on the first page" and attach your personal letter? You would feel comfortable not completing the first page? </p>
<p>I, too, have written numerous letters of recommendation for various professional and graduate schools. I always tried very hard to comply with the instructions. While I prefer to draft my own letter, I would never ignore a page the college clearly stated must be completed. I would never want my actions to compromise a student's chances for admission - regardless of my opinion of the evaluation form or the school requiring it.</p>
<p>Touchy-feely is probably a less than ideal word. I read a couple of essays from other kids this year. At least one was about physics and it was still more emotional and more personal than the ones my kid wrote. It's really okay, if I'd been the admissions officer I'd probably prefer the essays where more of the kid's personality shines through too. </p>
<p>Here's a funny story. My grandfather started at Harvard, but got kicked out for reasons that remain obscure to my mother. He ended up graduating from MIT. :)</p>
<p>Higherlead, I am not yet 50 !!!</p>
<p>I'll assume you are not trying to be deliberately argumentative. However, I think it is fair to say that admissions in general is practiced according to whatever set of attributes is deemed valuable at a particular institution at a particular point in time, as long as it is not discriminatory. Any number of schools have an interest in maintaining a fairly even gender distribution, and there is no school of which I am aware for which admission is based solely on SAT scores or GPA. Even Chicago has a fairly loose set of qualities it looks for in a student. My point is that MIT is not restricted to choosing a class based on whatever qualities prospective students believe that they should value, i.e. AIME, SATs or GPA. </p>
<p>By the way, Richard Feynman was quite creative, studied life drawing in his later years, and also became a percussionist. There is also an MIT professor (sorry, but I can't remember his name) who was profiled in the Boston Globe for winning an amateur classical piano competition (the Van Cliburn, maybe?).</p>
<p>The most brilliant biologist I know is also an excellent (2nd place in National Bluegrass championship) banjo player. I also saw Richard Feynman in the play The Lady's Not for Burning. :)</p>
<p>Just like your resume, the internet is forever.</p>
<p>Jones is new dean of admissions</p>
<p>Sarah H. Wright, News Office
December 17, 1997</p>
<p>................ "Ms. Jones, who holds the SB and SM in biology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, came to MIT in 1978 as a graduate resident tutor at Burton House."</p>
<p>.......We had more than 65 applicants for the position, most of whom were highly qualified.</p>
<p>Wait, so now if a student's teachers don't follow the instructions on the recommendation form, we should penalize the student? Are you seriously suggesting that Marilee Jones was unfair in <em>not overturning the decisions made by numerous others in the office</em> because of something the student's teacher did? Also, I'm sure this lapse in judgment can be directly attributed to her lying about her degrees.</p>
<p>Can we dial back into something resembling reality now?</p>
<p>It's too bad we can't simply celebrate a college dropout done well.</p>
<p>(But I fully understand why we can't.) ;)</p>
<p>LauraN, </p>
<p>I happen to know of kids who received notices that their teacher evaluation forms were not complete. And, yes, after investigating, they found it was because certain teachers had neglected to complete required forms - choosing instead to submit their own letters. </p>
<p>Is this really any more ridiculous than requiring students to take SAT II's after already making numerous 5's on the same AP exams? </p>
<p>I personally think many admission requirements are absolutely bogus. But, if a school requires the submission of certain documents, test results, etc. - especially if they clearly delineate those requirements, I do think they should ensure all students submit required materials.</p>
<p>"However, I think it is fair to say that admissions in general is practiced according to whatever set of attributes is deemed valuable at a particular institution at a particular point in time, as long as it is not discriminatory. Any number of schools have an interest in maintaining a fairly even gender distribution"</p>
<p>They may have a legitimate interest in maintaining gender balance but that does not mean they can use whatever means they care to employ to attain it. Specifically they cannot silo the applications and choose 25% from one silo and 10% from the other. That is a de facto quota. If they want more women then they need to get more to apply and then use the same standards to choose male and female admits.</p>
<p>Harvard in my lifetime wanted a class that looked like America - an America that was 88% white and Christian. To attain it they put a cap on Jewish admissions. That was wrong and putting a cap on male admissions or Asian admissions at MIT is equally wrong. Today it is also illegal.</p>
<p>So, higherlead, would you advocate that MIT admit students in the exact proportions that they appear in the applicant pool, regardless of how "qualified" those subgroups may be?</p>
<p>One interesting fact that I've learned in the past few days is that Caltech actually has a higher female admit rate than MIT does -- Caltech admits 30% of female applicants and 17% of male applicants, while admits 26% of female applicants and 10% of male applicants. Since Caltech states that it does not practice affirmative action for female applicants, it seems clear that the female applicants to Caltech are more self-selected than the male applicants. It does not seem like a huge logical stretch to me to say that female applicants to MIT are more self-selected than male applicants.</p>
<p>Ben Jones has said on this forum that female applicants to MIT (and I quote) "pwn" male applicants.</p>
<p>^^ pwn?<br>
?</p>
<p>mini - she was just a part time non-matriculated student, so she didn't even achieve the status of being able to drop out.</p>
<p>On the other hand Bill Gates has done well after dropping out of College, but then he never lied about that :)</p>
<hr>
<p>If you would like to Celebrate Marilee's accomplishments, fill out the Honorary Degree Nomination form on the RPI President's Web page. It's has a link on the left side of the page. For an example my submission is at post 616
<a href="http://www.rpi.edu/president/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.rpi.edu/president/index.html</a></p>
<p>"So, higherlead, would you advocate that MIT admit students in the exact proportions that they appear in the applicant pool, regardless of how "qualified" those subgroups may be?"</p>
<p>No obviously not. Read my post. What I said is they cannot silo the applications and they cannot use different standards. What that means in practice is if the class rank, gpas, test scores etc of the group receiving the much higher percentage of admits is on average lower than another group then we can assume discrimination and the burden of proof to prove otherwise falls on the MIT admissions department. That is a multipart test.</p>
<p>It is NOT a sufficient defense to show that they prefered group was qualified. The school must also prove that they did not discrimate between qualified applicants on an irrelevant characteristic OR they must prove that the ends justify the means. As I have said in other posts Gutter vs Bollinger granted such an "ends justify the means" exemption for African Americans but I doubt the courts would extend it to sex. Regardless it is quit hypocritical for MIT to carry all those nondscrimination claims all over their website. Might just as well be upfront about it and say too many men need not apply.</p>