<p>a West Coast college huh? </p>
<p>most of the elite college admission deans know each other very well -- i'd bet dollars to donuts that she's at Stanford... (not to take anything away from her daughter, but when your mom is a member of the "dean club", it has its benefits)</p>
<p>She's at pomona, probably. Not much less prestigious than Stanford.</p>
<p>Pomona. Probably? At any rate, its going to be a top tier school.</p>
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Oh! I pity on Hitler's misfortune! Poor guy!
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<p>This is what I meant by trying to make Ms. Jones out to be evil: calling her an "Al Mujahid for debauchery" and subtly comparing her to Hitler and Bin Laden. Dude, this is NOT the place to bring in any of these characters. We are talking about resume fraud, not mass murder. </p>
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It shows that no matter how hard you work for 28 years, what matters is where you went to college. Sad.
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<p>I really don't think the issue was where she went to college. I think the issue was that she lied.</p>
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She goes, and is in charge of rejecting students and crushing dreams and she probably wasn't even qualified to have her spot.
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<p>She proved herself to be more than qualified to hold her spot over the years. It's unfortunate that she probably wouldn't have risen as far if she had not lied about her degrees. A college drop-out heading admissions at one of the best schools in the world? I doubt it would have happened, but she nevertheless showed that she could do the job well.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>Everyone has made mistakes in life, and while lying about having a PHD when you don't even have a bachelors degree is certainly a huge lie, she is human. She desperately wanted to rise the ranks, and perhaps felt compelled to lie. Have some humanity. She isn't a bad person. She lied and is now paying the price.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>It's actually worse than just a simple lie. There is another layer of wrongdoing to all this. Ask yourself this: How many times over the course of her long career did she dump some kid's app in the reject pile because she thought the kid had exaggerated his qualifications or achievements in some way? And not just her personal review of the apps, but I'm sure that was her policy for the whole department - when you smell a liar, pitch him.</p>
<p>Given her own ongoing lie, how could she do that and live with herself? How did she ever sleep at night?</p>
<p>I just have to add that this goes a long way towards explaining the sort of anti-merit (or maybe more precisely merit-neutral) "soft" admissions, with heavy affirmative action, that she and MIT have been recently (and inexplicably) advocating. I recall reading once that she said with pride that 10% of the students she admits now would never have been admitted to MIT in the past. (I frankly take that to mean that that 10% would not meet the academic standards of the old MIT, which I don't think is anything to be proud of.) Maybe she saw herself in those students and that is why she became such a strong advocate of "taking a chance" on those who are not objectively the most qualified for admission?</p>
<p>I also think that by pushing the "soft factors" so much, she's (ironically, given all of her publications on the subject) stressed out students MUCH more than in the old days when academic achievement was what tipped the balance. At least everyone understood what that meant; now high-achieving students who would have been taken in MIT's heyday but are now rejected in favor of Ms. Jones' "special" 10% are left wondering variously "what in the world else might I have done?" and "does this mean I'm a 'bad person'?".</p>
<p>Let me add this as I'm sure the question will arise, especially given my username:</p>
<p>I was accepted to MIT for undergrad in 2000 and again for a PhD program in 2004, so I have nothing against the place personally. I met Marilee Jones briefly at MIT CPW and thought she was nice, and also had a decent (although frustratingly vague compared to the corresponding Caltech conversation) conversation on the phone with her when I was in the process of applying.
Joe (Caltech '04) is online now</p>
<p>Get all the MIT rejectees to go to her house and spray paint the words "HYPOCRITE" all over her car.</p>
<p>Is MIT admissions doing anything about those students who were rejected this year????</p>
<p>coureur: "Given her own ongoing lie, how could she do that and live with herself? How did she ever sleep at night?"
Bad people do bad things without worrying about anything. The only thing they worry about is when their lie is discovered. She slept well and laughed in the face of the MIT commutnity. We should blame more on MIT and elite colleges with subjective admission criteria and loop holes than blaming on her.</p>
<p>Simply put- she deserved to be fired (okay, resigned); she deserved all the embarrassment that she's receiving for this. She had no place in the admissions process, and no place running the office.</p>
<p>I wonder how many lawsuits from rejected students will come of this? I certainly hope a few do ;)</p>
<p>"It shows that no matter how hard you work for 28 years, what matters is where you went to college. Sad."</p>
<p>I suppose that this statement was misguided. Certainly the issue is her lie, not "where she went to college." </p>
<p>However, to say that she had no place in the admissions office simply because of a lack of a degree is sad, in my opinion. People have proved on numerous occasions that a college degree is not always imperative to success. Despite her controversial admissions policies, she still managed to do something right that merited her numerous promotions within the admissions department. While she might have rejected students, she tried to make it a more human process. I think that's commendable.</p>
<p>Again, she deserved to lose her job, but to be called a "bad person" for a lie is simply cruel and unfair. What she did was dishonest and embarrasing for MIT, but it did not directly hurt anyone (to my knowledge). Perhaps I am a pushover...</p>
<p>Her daughter goes to Claremont McKenna College, next door to Pomona.</p>
<p>i wonder if her daughter even knew...</p>
<p>I am just curious. What evidence is there that students admitted under the Jone's regime were less qualified to do MIT work? Did MIT graduation rates plummet under her? Did GPAs collapse under her? Did professors complain about the caliber of students that her office admitted?</p>
<p>Sadly, irony abounds in this quote from a Time magazine article:
"Ever since she first joined the admissions staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979, Marilee Jones has been a uniquely moral voice in the college admissions landscape. "</p>
<p>yorkyfan: There is no evidence. But if a student lies to a college (not necessarily on academic matters), his/her degree will be rescinded when the lie is discovered regardless whether the student graduates or not. When a school official improperly administers a standardized test, the test scores of the entire school are void, regardless whether the students perform well on the test or not. That is the name of the game. Jone's regime makes people feel uneasy about MIT graduates, regardless whether they are super intelligent or not.</p>
<p>Wow! That is very sad indeed. The achievements of countless MIT grads are questioned because of the dishonesty of one woman.</p>
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Is MIT admissions doing anything about those students who were rejected this year????
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<p>Absolutely nothing. Everyone's application is reviewed by a committee of several people. No decisions will be changed. Any lawsuits will be deemed frivolous and tossed out as ridiculous. Any lawsuit would only prove that the adcoms made the right decision.</p>
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What evidence is there that students admitted under the Jone's regime were less qualified to do MIT work? Did MIT graduation rates plummet under her? Did GPAs collapse under her? Did professors complain about the caliber of students that her office admitted?
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<p>Absolutely none.</p>
<p>I wouldn't want to be Marilee Jones for all the money in the world right now. I don't think I'd be able to handle the fallout from the lies, nor the probably unforeseen ramifications/implications which would ripple far into the future. What was she thinking?! Indeed, she must ask herself that question everyday. I know I would. My guess is that, in order to live with herself everyday since she committed this fraud, she resolved to be the best, most compassionate, most passionate, hard working admission director in the county, thinking that could make up for her egregious lie. Maybe in her mind, she rationalized: "Ok, I made a terrible mistake, but now I will try with all that is in me to make up for it. I will try to change the admission process for the better, bring honesty and transparency to an inherently flawed and subjective process, and at one of the country's most high pressure, prestigious schools. I will make people respect me and love me, and maybe, when the shoe finally drops, some people will remember that I'm not all bad, that I did some good." </p>
<p>Surely, she had to have known that this gargantuan lie would come back to bite her eventually. Or maybe she only looked at every politician that ever ran for president, and realized that people are more than willing to forgive acts of dishonesty more egregious, more gargantuan than anything she could ever think of. Silly rabbit....</p>
<p>I wonder if she told her husband he was the first.</p>