MIT admissions dean resigns over resume fraud. Ouch!

Parents Forum
1181

<p>"They weigh the WHOLE person and sometimes if one criteria is weak, another criteria is over the top with that candidate that compensates."</p>

<p>And how does that work when one of those criteria is a binary variable like race or region? How much does that over the top criteria compensate for the others? I mean holistically of course:-)</p>

<p>If enough data were collected there would be quantifiable revealed preferences even if there were not stated ones in allegedly "holistic" admissions just as there are in holistic acceptances among admitted students.</p>

1182

<p>EDIT: I just found it.</p>

<p>Well, things have changed then.</p>

1183

<p>MIT must consider Cambridge and Boston geography, as it has facilities and student residences in those places and deals with the city hall. There are probably state-level issues as well, as MIT is a feeder for the Massachusetts technology industry. The book by ex-Harvard admission officer Chuck Hughes is surprisingly candid about this in commenting on the equivalent local admissions preferences at Harvard, where the issues are the same but the number of applications affected is higher.</p>

1184

<p>No, it actually says it doesn't consider state residence on the website mathmom provided above.</p>

<p>It's not a state school, so it doesn't have to do anything.</p>

1185

<p>MIT may or may not consider state geography (other than special Massachusetts issues), but its admission rate is anomalously high for Boston Latin School, as is Harvard's, and the same must be true for Cambridge Rindge and Latin, which is the local public high school in Cambridge. MIT and Harvard are in perennial negotiation over any number of things with the local city hall and possibly the state, such as how many millions of dollars in subsidy payments and local contractor preferences they need to provide in order to avoid political wrath for growing their endowment without paying taxes.</p>

1186

<p>Isn't Boston Latin a top private school or a magnet? Presumably they have a lot of smart people. BTW, about how many people do they take per year?</p>

<p>We all know that Harvard whores itself out in the admissions process, but I'd like to think better of MIT.</p>

1187

<p>Look at BLS web site for the number of admits and matriculants. There is a huge advantage at Harvard (as was well known) and, given that most students are not majoring in science, apparently a large advantage at MIT as well. BLS is a top public school with exam-selected students, but no way that many applicants get in each year without favoritism.</p>

1188

<p>Higherlead wrote:</p>

<p>
[quote]
"They weigh the WHOLE person and sometimes if one criteria is weak, another criteria is over the top with that candidate that compensates."</p>

<p>And how does that work when one of those criteria is a binary variable like race or region? How much does that over the top criteria compensate for the others? I mean holistically of course:-)

[/quote]
</p>

<p>You misunderstand, I believe. When I said one criteria might be weaker...say a 730 Math SAT and another criteria might be extremely strong that balances it out....i wasn't talking of geography, race, or religion (though by the way, how would they know your religion anyway?). I meant that a kid could have a 730 Math SAT but perhaps had exceptional achievements in math or science competitions, took an extremely difficult science/math curriculum, took college classes in math, did some research/internship in the field, had perfect grades, top ranking at school, had exceptional achievements outside the classroom, and so forth. My point was speaking to other strengths and achievements that balance out that the SAT score, while in the ballpark for MIT, is not at their higher end of the range of accepted students. I wasn't talking of race, religion, or geography. </p>

<p>However, once they have found exceptional candidates whose entire profile is attractive, they still have too many than slots available. At that point, balancing the class might come into play.....whether it is geography, family background, race, different intended fields of interest, different strengths that might diversify the class, and so forth. </p>

<p>It is not like they say, we want some kid from this state or this race and throw all the other criteria out the window. FIRST, a candidate needs to be qualified and attractive, and once there are too many that fit that criteria, they pick and choose a balance of types of students that would diversify the group, which makes the learning environment more interesting.</p>

1189

<p>What? It has a check for geography having the same importance as essays and a whole lot of other things. The residence thing is for state schools instate priority. MIT folks have always told me and my students that they, like many other schools , want national representation (assuming every applicant is qualified). Caltech would like to get more kids from a broader sweep of states too. Sometimes there just are not many applicants and some are not qualified. Some state schools, such as Michigan, have part of their mission to have broad geographic representation and even offer academic scholarhsips to lure top kids from underrepresented states.</p>

1190

<p>someone was saying mit had a preference for in-state people--that's what I was contesting.</p>

1191

<p>Notice how personal traits and ECs are important and considered. This is what I mean about looking at the whole candidate. Numerous candidates have the smarts. Way too many than slots available. They look at other traits and accomplishments beyond SATs and such. Further, they do attempt to balance the class by such things as gender and geography and race. Just like many other elite colleges. </p>

<p>That is why when I read students comment on some CC threads and say, "not fair" when someone with a lower SAT gets in over someone with a higher SAT....that there is MUCH more to elite college admissions than that one piece. Listing "stats" on a message board doesn't give the entire picture that the adcoms have of the candidate. Further, the issue of building a diverse class (diverse in many different respects) comes into play and so it is not like every applicant is looked at in isolation of the total picture. </p>

<p>In my view, none of this has to to do with Marilee Jones. Frankly, I think MIT and other schools of its calibur do a fine and fair job reviewing applicants. Still, very qualified candidates WILL be denied. That is the nature of elite college admissions. It is to be expected. </p>

<p>By the way, I don't find it unusual that MIT would have many admits from some of the top prep or high schools in the Boston area. This is true at many elite colleges. It is no surprise that elite high schools would have a rapport with colleges nearby. The colleges have taken kids from these high schools before and know these schools well. Even colleges that draw from an international applicant pool, still get a heavy dose of applicants from nearby. For instance, at Yale, there are a big number of kids from CT and also from a local well known private day school. These colleges do not have a preference for in state kids. But it is common that there is a high number of kids from nearby who apply.</p>

1192

<p>Harvard gives an edge to Cambridge residents, but not MIT whose relations with the city have always been better than Harvard's. Yale is also known to give an edge to New Haven residents. Boston Latin has long been a feeder school to Harvard (which was founded one year after Boston Latin). </p>

<p>Michael Kinsley has an article about M Jones in Time magazine, with which I disagree. But here it is:
<a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1617508,00.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1617508,00.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

1193

<p>MIT, not only Harvard, admits an unusually large number of BLS students. If there is a positive bias for BLS it can only be more so for CRLS. This does not necessarily mean there is a quota for CRLS, but it's an average school that would not send many students to top schools if located outside Cambridge. The professors don't send their kids there, to be sure.</p>

1194

<p>"It's not a state school, so it doesn't have to do anything."</p>

<p>collegealum314 - well that is not exatly true. There are laws against certain types of discrimination but geographic residence is not one of them.</p>

1195

<p>I do not believe there is a bias for CRLS at MIT. There is one at Harvard, for reasons I mentioned above. BLS is different insofar as it is an exam school. CRLS is bimodal: it has some stellar students (admitted not only at Harvard but also at schools where there is no edge or hook) but it also has underperforming students. 48% of the students or thereabouts are on F/R lunch, there are nearly 30 languages spoken there. The pass rate on MCAS is in the 70% range, and the average SATs still below 1000.<br>
The year Harvard admitted 11 students from CRLS, MIT admitted 3, I believe.</p>

1196

<p>3 versus 11 is close to the general population interest ratio of MIT to Harvard. Unless there is a big science bias among the cream of CRLS, something is helping them at MIT. To put it differently, what is the CRLS acceptance rate at Caltech?</p>

1197

<p>
[quote=Time Magazine]
What a pity, though. M.I.T. has lost an apparently great dean at a time when you don't read a lot about successful university administrators. And, it turns out, she is one who had a personal as well as professional understanding of the stresses of our r</p>

1198

<p>Marite,
Thanks for the link to the article in Time magazine. The first part of the article was good. But when I got to the suggestion of granting Marilee Jones an honorary degree from MIT, my opinion of the article went south. While it is true that the merit of her work contributed to her success on the job, and not some degree next to her name (or that she succeeded despite a graduate degree or a degree from a prestigious college), that is not the point in THIS case. The point is that number one she lied at her job several times and over a long period of time. Employers should care about integrity of its employees. Further, if the person in charge of reviewing applicants' "resumes" padded her own, it calls into question her ability to be fair and honorable in carrying out that mission. The fact that her own actions were the antithesis to that which she was not only charged to do on the job, but were in such absolute contrast to what she preached in speaking engagements and in her book, makes her unfit to hold that position for her role to be taken seriously by others. She may have earned merit on the job and done a very good job indeed. And there is something to be said for that and it is not all about the degree next to your name or the college where you once attended. But her position as the Director of Admissions at a school where admissions is so selective no less, cannot be taken seriously due to the lack of integrity that she has tainted all her work with at this point. An honorary degree would recognize the merit of her achievements and work on the job, yes, but would be a sham in the sense that she lacked honor and integrity on that job that taints the rest. After all, they don't call it an HONORary degree for nothin'!</p>

1199

<p>Siserune:
At a place like CRLS, the easiest way to shine is through math/science. In fact, of the students I know who've made it into Harvard, MIT and Yale, the majority were big on science.
Very very few people seem to apply to schools in CA. Of the 11 students admitted to Harvard that year, only one turned down Harvard: to go to Stanford. My own S got admitted to Stanford, too, but applied only because the deadline for applying was the same day as Harvard's EA notification. Of the students I've known for the last 20 years or so, I only know of 2 who have gone to Stanford. I don't know anyone who applied to Caltech. Geography plays a big part. This is one of the reasons why there is such a crush of applicants to top schools in the Northeast.
By the way, one of the students who got into MIT did not get into Harvard. But he did so well in his first year in organic chemistry that he was invited to be a CA in that course the following year.</p>

1200

<p>Soozie, I agree with you. Honorary degree, indeed! Yuck.</p>