<p>I see no basis for presuming that cofeenchicory1 is "from MIT admissions," or for assuming that Ms. Jones's dishonesty means that anyone else (at MIT or anywhere else) has engaged in such a brazen deception.</p>
<p>But this incident at least raise question on the ability of MIT to find such cases. So with what confidence can you say that there are no other such cases exists at MIT Adminstration?
It is true though that this won't apply to other top universities as it has not been proven on any single person there.
MIT need to provide evidence that they have done background checks on all the people involve in adminstration by a third party to restore confidence in their Admission office.</p>
<p>Consider the following example:</p>
<p>If a CFO is caught in a Stock Option Scandal. You don't just remove the CFO but start law suits, inquires into all the other office bearer of that company to make sure noone else is doing the same.</p>
<p>MIT need to be scruitnized similarly. You don't want that some is taking out their hatred for this Dean and putting the other dirt under the carpet.</p>
<p>There should be an independent enquiry into this and all the adminstration need to go thru background verification to restor confidence in the admission process of such a prestigious University.</p>
<p>I know that everyone wishes we lived in an ideal world where hard work = success, but the truth is this country runs on a bottom line of "the money".
I am no more "surprised" by accusations of bribes than I am by legacy admits. </p>
<p>These colleges are businesses and will act as such - admitting those who they think will give them the better return in the long run. For some that means writing those alumni checks, for others that means bringing in free advertising though the fame/fortune of certain admits, for yet a few more it's the political connections that greese the wheels of business. And, for those few really academically talented that they are able to actually produce - it's the academic, medical and technological acheivements that the college hopes to cash in on. But it's all the same - the almighty dollar.</p>
<p>And given the fact that this lady did so well in her ill-gotten position for so many years at MIT is only proof postive that many can "do the job" even without the fancy degrees or "Ivy" education. On some level, that actually should be encouraging.</p>
<p>OK this is a crosspost from the MIT board (with substantial rewriting), but I object to so many of the arguments I see here, that it is winding me up somewhat. There seems to be several points made repeatedly on this board and they all seem wrong.</p>
<p>1) "Oh well, it was just a trivial mistake 28 years ago."</p>
<p>That's very wrong. She is in the position of judging the integrity of students. Therefore she must be held to the very highest standards of personal integrity. This was not a forgivable mistake and the Institute was absolutely correct in "inviting her to resign".</p>
<p>2) "This completely undermines MIT admissions under the years"</p>
<p>Also wrong. She was one highly significant voice amongst many, delivering the class that the faculty had asked for. She was, by all accounts, very good at her job. The faculty was very happy, and indeed she had won MIT's highest award for administrators. There are those who do not like MIT's current admissions, but it is producing the class that the MIT faculty is requesting. Under a different director of admissions, it is highly likely that at least 98% of the decisons would be identical.</p>
<p>3) "She was unqualified to be director of admissions"</p>
<p>Possibly right, possibly wrong. She had been there for 28 years, and after that sort of time, promotion decisions are made on the quality of your work, and ability to "face" the department. The job she originally applied for 28 years ago did not require a college degree. After that she was promoted on merit. Was a degree necessary in order to do the job of director of admissions? Clearly not, or she would not have done so well with the job for so many years. Would she have been made director of admissions if she did not have any degree? Who knows, but probably not. That isn't to say that degrees are strictly speaking required.</p>
<p>My MIT professor for 6.002 (Circuits) was the incredibly impressive Campbell Searle, who was recently made an emeritus professor (so the institute really liked him). He made it to the top of his profession without and advanced degree. Do most professors have doctorates or at least masters degrees? Yes. Are they required? Clearly not, but you need to be very impressive to succeed without them.</p>
<p>4) "The Cambridge D.A. will clearly be considering charges"</p>
<p>For lying on a resume?? According to one news report, roughly 20% of all resumes contain some "exaggeration". And yet, I do not see all of these people rotting in prison.
Did she lie? Yep.<br>
Is her professional career in tatters? Yep.<br>
Should it be? Yep.<br>
Is she likely to be rotting in prison? Nope.
Is that the right decision? Yep, IMHO.</p>
<p>5) "Admissions at MIT are now going to change"</p>
<p>Highly unlikely under interim chief Stu Schmill. He has worked in that office for a very long time. Also unlikely without a significant change in the faculty leadership.</p>
<p>6) "The institute needs to examine the legitimacy of their entire admissions system."</p>
<p>Not as far as I can see. She was doing a good job and the faculty was extremely satisfied with the classes she was admitting. I cannot see how this changes things.</p>
<p>7) "I was thinking of applying to MIT/having my child apply to MIT, but now I have lost all faith in the institution."</p>
<p>An MIT administrator lied on her resume. As soon as MIT found out about it, they fired her. This could have happened at any university in the world. Today most employers do at least some resume verification prior to hiring. That was much less true 28 years ago, particularly given that the entry-level job she originally held did not require a university degree. </p>
<p>Every moderately sized company, church, or university has dealt with at least one case of employee malfeasance. It is all but impossible to prevent it from happening. The key question is how does the entity handle the situation. I personally think MIT took the correct action. If you will not attend any university that has suffered a scandal in its administration in the past 10 years, that rules out much of the Ivy league. I personally think that a scandal such as this, where an administrator lied on a resume, is much less serious than those involving teaching staff (or worse teaching staff and students). Heck, if you would not belong to any religion that hasn't experienced some scandal, then you would have even fewer options.</p>
<p>Jones did demonstrate an alarming lack of personal integrity, but I think that in context, this reflects well rather than poorly on MIT.</p>
<p>8) "My son/daughter/self would have gotten into MIT but for the evil Jones."</p>
<p>Exceptionally unlikely. Decisions were committee decisions at MIT. According to Ben Jones' admissions blog, "Approximately 12 people (give or take) will significantly discuss and debate your application before you're admitted." I just don't see one person, even the director, altering more than a handful of applications per year. Indeed, perhaps you or your child were indeed in that small handful, but nobody has disputed that she was good at admissions. The faculty certainly were very happy with the classes selected. </p>
<p>Competitive admissions is a numbers game. I am an international interviewer for MIT. There's roughly a 4% admit ratio for international applicants, and every year I meet brilliant, talented, wonderful people who are going to be rejected. Indeed given that only 1 in 27 get accepted, and that I don't interview as many as 27 in a year, odds are each year that I will not meet an accepted student. If you felt that you should have gotten in and you didn't, I understand your pain, but a director of admissions who lied, is unlikely to have been the cause.</p>
<p>Mikalye: Let take it one by one. Your first point</p>
<p>"
1) "Oh well, it was just a trivial mistake 28 years ago."</p>
<p>That's very wrong. She is in the position of judging the integrity of students. Therefore she must be held to the very highest standards of personal integrity. This was not a forgivable mistake and the Institute was absolutely correct in "inviting her to resign".
"
If it was not a forgivable mistake then how can we forgiv MIT to hire her and made her DEAN of the admissions process without verifying her credential.
Even if she was hired 28 years ago, she was not made DEAN then. Why didn't MIT do a better job while looking for DEAN. How do you expect them to do a good job hiring or making someone else as DEAN. That is how you can make sure interim chief Stu Schmill didn't lie when hired.</p>
<p>There need to be a 3rd party investigation into this admission process.</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>28 years ago it WAS a trivial mistake</p>
<p>It is her failing to correct the record in all that time which constitutes the repeated and increasingly serious misbehavior on her part.</p>
<p>I think we are confused. DEAN was wrong what she did and got fired.
But what about MIT. MIT process of hiring someone to a admission process head (DEAN) was so rotten that they never verified anyone credential and that didn't happen 28 year ago when they didn't have the resources.
Verifying credential now only takes a day at most.</p>
<p>Since MIT doesn't have a process in place to verify credential for key posts, how do you think they will be able to filter out student applications that are full of lies.</p>
<p>So in turn who gets into MIT not because of their academic talents but more on their art of lieing.</p>
<p>^^^ If it is true that there is no serious checking of the credentials or the background of people who have access to the SS#, dates of birth and a lot of other personal information of top quality students who may someday hold significant power and wealth, the top leaders of MIT should seriously worry. The people in in admissions office and financial aid even have the personal and financial information belonging to our parents! I am not sure what kind of security measures they may have, but I worry if it is possible for the staff to download the information and take it home. Suppose they collect information for several years, they will have info on hundreds of thousands of families - most of them quite successful.</p>
<p>
[quote]
After that she was promoted on merit. Was a degree necessary in order to do the job of director of admissions?
[/quote]
Absolutely Not. Honesty and Integrity are.</p>
<p>Many people become reserved while talking about institute of such repute as they think they are not good enough to talk about it. Has this happened to UC, there have been a bunch of lawyers filing law suits over the admissions during DEAN's tenure.</p>
<p>But everyone should keep in mind by discussing and voicing our opinion we are not undermining MIT academic capabilities. We are trying to surface flaw in their recuritment process which in turn affects our children life as these morally corrupt people control it.</p>
<p>I'm really surprised to see no lawyer have come out against this and starting a lawsuit.</p>
<p>Wakeup people don't get discourage because this happen at MIT. It is MIT because of the people like you or your children.</p>
<p>I'm surprised no one has sued as well - but I'm happy about it. It would be an unbelievably stupid thing to sue for - you can't prove that she changed her mind on any single applicant because of the fact that she lied about her degrees, and even if she had made some different decision you can't prove that her change of mind got the person rejected, and then you can't prove that that person's rejection materially changed their life. Too many intangibles. It's good anyways though, in my opinion. Too many lawsuits in America - not everything adverse that happens should be material for someone to sue.</p>
<p>To ParentOfIvyHope: Such harsh language. "Morally corrupt people"? Be very careful there. There was only one person who lied, and even then I would personally find anyone who called her morally corrupt completely lacking perspective. While the mistake wasn't forgivable - because lying about anything on a resume isn't - it's not because she has to be some kind of angelic pure figure to be able to function as dean of admissions that she was invited to resign.</p>
<p>Let's not trivialized her mistake, as some or doing - it is serious when someone lies on a resume and then fails to correct it (although I can see how; the longer you live a lie, the harder it becomes to tell the truth about it), especially for 28 years - but we also shouldn't blow it out of proportion, as some - I'm looking at you, here, ParentOfIvyHope - are doing. This isn't something that requires an independent audit of MIT's hiring process (I'm sure they'll be fixing that themselves), and Marilee is still in my opinion a generally good person, who tried very hard to do what was best for MIT in all her work as Dean of Admissions. I think she's done a lot of good, and I think some are far too quick to demonize her (ParentOfIvyHope, this is you again) and MIT because of this lie.</p>
<p>Just as a postscript, I write this as a student who was just rejected from MIT. Come on people, it's not exactly rocket science to realize that she didn't singlehandedly change anything in any admissions decision, and even if/when she did, it was almost certainly nothing to do with this dishonesty. Reality check please.</p>
<p>
[quote]
My MIT professor for 6.002 (Circuits) was the incredibly impressive Campbell Searle, who was recently made an emeritus professor (so the institute really liked him). He made it to the top of his profession without and advanced degree. Do most professors have doctorates or at least masters degrees? Yes. Are they required? Clearly not, but you need to be very impressive to succeed without them.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Things were probably different 40 years ago when Campbell Searle began his career, but I seriously doubt anyone can nowadays be hired as a tenure-track assistant professor at MIT or any other top university without a PhD degree. Besides, the difference between Prof. Searle and Ms. Jones is that the former never lied about his academic credentials to advance his career, while the latter did that several times througout her long, 28-year stay at MIT. </p>
<p>Ms. Jones' crime is not just an "innocent lie", but actually blatant fraud of the worst kind. She pretended to be a doctor and a scientist, not only to become dean of admissions in a top university, but also to write and sell books, give TV interviews, and profit both professionally and financially. Her attitude was completely inexcusable and unjustified. On top of that, contrary to the opinion of many people on this board, her policies as dean of admissions were actually highly controversial, as she introduced admission guidelines that resulted in several higly qualified and gifted applicants being rejected by MIT, while other less qualified candidates were accepted based on arbitrary, subjective and questionable criteria. </p>
<p>Personally, if I were in a position of power at MIT, I would have already fired Ms. Jones long ago based solely on incompetence, regardless of what we now know was also her lack of ethical behavior. Instead, however, MIT rewarded her with merit awards, which, as ParentofIvyHope said, raises serious questions about MIT's present and past leadership.</p>
<p>1of42:</p>
<p>I'm not sure why are you so defensive about MIT. If it is fault on DEANs part it is also a fault on the part of MIT.</p>
<p>If you are ready to punish DEAN by firing and routing her image this way. MIT should bear the burnt of the rath too.</p>
<p>You just cann't give a clear chit to MIT just because it is MIT. That is what happens in America. The bigger you are the bigger crimes you can get away with.</p>
<p>We (Americans) are afraid of fighting the bull by horn. We are afraid of talking against powerful politicians, institutes, or corporations.</p>
<p>But we have the habit of mutilating the weaker secitons of the society.</p>
<p>SO please be reasonable. MIT has done wrong and should be audited by a third party. Even if the institute is private, it has no right to play with students emotions. The truth should come to light.</p>
<p>How can you be so sure that for 28 years she was not being covered by MIT Chancellors and may be something happened between the present Chancelors or other high profile people at MIT and this DEAN and the time has come for her to go.</p>
<p>That will indicate that there are many more such cases but since they still have good terms with the high profile people at MIT so they are not being exposed.</p>
<p>So just it is MIT then it will be clean has been proven wrong. So once this image of clean have been broken, the trust should be kept aside and an enquiry into this matter by a thirs party should be done.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'm not sure why are you so defensive about MIT. If it is fault on DEANs part it is also a fault on the part of MIT.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I agree with this. Any employer is responsible for the behaviour of its staff in the carrying out of their duties. That's true whether we are talking about a janitor or a Dean. MIT is absolutely responsible for any misconduct carried out by Marilee Jones in the conduct of her duties. However, this misconduct has not been alleged. Her very serious misconduct relates to lying about her credentials; there has been no allegations of misconduct IN HER PERFORMANCE AS DIRECTOR OF ADMISSIONS. This makes it hard to see what misconduct if any MIT is responsible for.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If you are ready to punish DEAN by firing and routing her image this way. MIT should bear the burnt of the rath too.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I am ready to punish Jones, because she was deserving of punishment. I bear her no wrath. She screwed up, she's gone.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You just cann't give a clear chit to MIT just because it is MIT. That is what happens in America. The bigger you are the bigger crimes you can get away with. We (Americans) are afraid of fighting the bull by horn. We are afraid of talking against powerful politicians, institutes, or corporations. But we have the habit of mutilating the weaker secitons of the society.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Most of this is irrelevant. I don't think anyone is trying to mutilate the weaker secitons of society. Indeed, MIT admissions under the hated Jones had a much higher rate of low income students and first generation college students than most "peer institutions."</p>
<p>Did MIT screw up in not discovering it sooner? Sure. Yet it is hard to see who suffered as a result of this screw up, apart from MIT itself from the blow to MIT's reputation.</p>
<p>
[quote]
SO please be reasonable. MIT has done wrong and should be audited by a third party. Even if the institute is private, it has no right to play with students emotions. The truth should come to light.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>MIT screwed up, yes, but I cannot see what the proposed 3rd party audit might solve? Check the credentials of every one of the literally thousands of staff at MIT. I suspect this has now already happened. I agree that the Institute has no right to play with student's emotions, but I cannot see how it has done that.</p>
<p>
[quote]
How can you be so sure that for 28 years she was not being covered by MIT Chancellors and may be something happened between the present Chancelors or other high profile people at MIT and this DEAN and the time has come for her to go. That will indicate that there are many more such cases but since they still have good terms with the high profile people at MIT so they are not being exposed. So just it is MIT then it will be clean has been proven wrong. So once this image of clean have been broken, the trust should be kept aside and an enquiry into this matter by a thirs party should be done.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I consider this extremely unlikely, though I admit not impossible. My experience of the working world is that given a choice between whether something is a screwup or a conspiracy, it is usually screwup. In this particular case, I can see how the screwup happened. In my current firm, all staff have their credentials and CV's checked at the time they join the firm. Should they be promoted or take another job within the firm, their credentials are not rechecked. That is true of most firms that I have ever encountered.</p>
<p>No reference check took place when Jones was hired into her entry-level position 28 years ago (for which no degree was required). Then, once in the organisation, there were no further checks done.</p>
<p>Screwup. Penalties might be called for. But the penalties should be commensurate with a lie that has not hurt any student. The only ones who might have an axe to grind were those working in the admissions office who might have missed out on any promotion given to Jones. They do have the possibility that they were wronged, but to date, not one has come forward.</p>
<p>It seems that ParentofIvyHope would like to see senior figures at MIT dragged away in chains. I disagree, not because MIT is big and powerful, but because I do not feel that that is commensurate with the offence.</p>
<p>Mikalye:
"I consider this extremely unlikely, though I admit not impossible. My experience of the working world is that given a choice between whether something is a screwup or a conspiracy, it is usually screwup. In this particular case, I can see how the screwup happened. In my current firm, all staff have their credentials and CV's checked at the time they join the firm. Should they be promoted or take another job within the firm, their credentials are not rechecked. That is true of most firms that I have ever encountered."</p>
<p>Given a choice between a screwup and conspiracy it is always the other.</p>
<p>You think the Enron case is a screwup or the option scandal is a screw up.</p>
<p>All crimes when comitted are by choice and not screwups. If something like this was under the rug for 28 years there is more chance that it is not a stand alone screwup but a practice at the institute.</p>
<p>I don't want any one to be dragged in chain. I had a lot of respect for MIT and was my first choice for my daughter (Whether or not she would have made it into) to apply Early.
But this show it might not be a stand alone incident. My experience in the world say no one screwup for so long.
1. It was either a coverup for so long.
2. Or the system at MIT recruitment into admission office have flaws and how many more had made it to the MIT with wrong credential is anyone guess.</p>
<p>How did MIT find out about this? It was the dean that came out and admitted it, right? If so, why did she do this? Was there all of a sudden some sort of investigation? Or was it just her guilty conscience getting to her?</p>
<p>No, someone called MIT and told them to look into her credentials. They did so, and found she didn't have the degrees she claimed. They asked her to resign, and she did. She "admitted it " only after it was confirmed that she had lied.</p>
<p>She actually didn't reveal her actual degree after she was confronted with the discrepancy. MIT found that out later in the week. She also said that she had misrepresented all her degrees when she was first hired. The chancellor of MIT said that this is not consistent with what happened. She actually added her "medical degree" later, sometime before her Dean appointiment. </p>
<p>She has not been forthcoming with the truth early on, or as late as last week.</p>
<p>bruno123: "Personally, if I were in a position of power at MIT, I would have already fired Ms. Jones long ago based solely on incompetence, regardless of what we now know was also her lack of ethical behavior. Instead, however, MIT rewarded her with merit awards, which, as ParentofIvyHope said, raises serious questions about MIT's present and past leadership."</p>
<p>Because a differing opinion in what truly makes up a "good" incoming class somehow signifies bad leadership and undeserved merit? I think some of you guys are having a tough time separating your own biases and preferences from reality and practicality.</p>
<p>She rose the to the top and the people at MIT loved her work? Great, tell her to keep up the good work. What, she lied on her credentials a while back? Darn, make her resign. Case closed.</p>
<p>^ l0ll</p>
<p>On another note.... record yield this year!!</p>