<p>Why is that a Quaker thing? No disrespect mini, but you’re not the most humble poster.</p>
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<p>Eeeegads. That says volumes about MIT’s ambivalence towards women scientists. Why bother checking her credentials–or if we did–<em>wink, wink, nod, nod</em> why bother to expose her fraud?</p>
<p>I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the upcoming MIT board meetings.</p>
<p>Hmmm, no, sorry, to the contrary, from someone who knows, it’s VERY easy to correct someone who assumes you have a degree, or who asks if you have one, or asks where your degree is from, or even the more benign “what did you study in college” etc. I’ve been so doing for 20 years. And others have posted as well, ref. the husband who does not yet have his PhD - one sentence is all it takes to straighten it out.</p>
<p>I absolutely CAN understand and totally see a error in judgment when someone is in their early 20’s perhaps, just starting out. But over time, a person should sort of grow up or something. I mean, if even for the sake of her daughter - why wouldn’t she have been highly motivated to come clean in order to spare her daughter the potential extraordinary embarrassment if caught? I cannot imagine putting one’s child in that position…</p>
<p>“Why is that a Quaker thing? No disrespect mini, but you’re not the most humble poster.”</p>
<p>I’m about as arrogant as you can get! (just not particularly self-serving. ;)) The practice has nothing to do with humility (as good as that might be) - just the opposite. It dates from the 17th Century, and the refusal of Friends to provide “hat honor” - to the King, or to anyone else. Respect can be personally earned, of course, but it is our general practice to call folks by their first names, or, if last, preceded by “Friend”. The Quaker colleges still keep to this practice in students addressing faculty, or even the college pres. It is the same when it comes to standing when judges come into court.</p>
<p>Of course, many of us have adopted “the ways of the world”.</p>
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<p>Wow, I agree with Allmusic!</p>
<p>It is absolutely impossible to believe that everyone around MJ is just shocked, shocked about this revelation. I wonder if we’ll ever know the real story and the depth of the coverup–even more depressing.</p>
<p>“What she did was wrong, but the level of anger and insults being expressed here is extreme.”</p>
<p>Au contraire, mon ami. The level of anger and outrage is quite sufficient for the fraud. The responses have been rational and fairly non-emotional. If you feel these responses are extreme, you must live in a very sheltered environment.</p>
<p>sly_vt, I think this went beyond a secretary mistakenly putting a degree on a bio. There must have been a multitude of opportunities for her to correct any such error. </p>
<p>I would like to say, though, that I agree wholeheartedly with your point about the abilities of those who have graduated from MIT or are current students. If they hadn’t been able to handle the work, they’d have dropped out. No one makes it through that curriculum unless s/he is capable. It’s another example of how a selective school could admit several classes of similar quality from those who aren’t admitted.</p>
<p>There should not be any embarrassment attached to other admissions personnel or any other student or graduate. I think something fell through the cracks in terms of verifying her history, but I really don’t think it was deliberate or a conspiracy. Really, Ms. Jones is the one who is responsible.</p>
<p>I guess I do live in a sheltered environment, since I live in Vermont. But if you ever watch our Senator, Bernie Sanders, get riled up you’d know that Vermonters are used to extreme responses. </p>
<p>I stand by what I said. She did something wrong, but I don’t think the entire MIT admissions process should be maligned in such a hurtful way.</p>
<p>No doubt she was wrong, and her stepping down is the right thing to do. This is an excellent example to students (and adults!) of what can happen when you misrepresent yourself-- even when caught many years after the fact.</p>
<p>I suspect her lack of degrees had no impact on how she managed MIT admissions. I was personally shocked by the caliber of some of my child’s acquaintances who were rejected this year (two amazing math students, one of whom also is a major campus leader), but really I assume that is because lots of other amazing students applied, as well. It’s 2007, there are just too many amazing kids to fit into all these amazing schools. </p>
<p>No, MIT acceptance rates have nothing to do with Ms. Jones’ lack of degrees. </p>
<p>I’m surprised she lacked the sense to keep a lower profile than going on a speaking tour and writing a book. Sounds like someone from her past decided to rat her out. I guess time had made her confident and forget about her overt lies.</p>
<p>“I stand by what I said. She did something wrong, but I don’t think the entire MIT admissions process should be maligned in such a hurtful way.”</p>
<p>Bad leadership can have an incredibly damaging affect on those who work for them. A real world example that no one is crying about is the company of Enron. Due to the “mistakes” of those in charge, thousands of people lost their jobs just because they worked there. They never did anything wrong themselves, it was the fraudulent actions of their leadership. Everyone clamored for Ken Lay and Jeffery Skilling to go to jail but no one thought about all of those people who were going to be put out of work. Bad leadership has its consequences and, yes, MIT admissions will bear the brunt of this scandal. They should be thankful they work for a non-profit institution and not a public company.</p>
<p>MIT will be subjected to a lot of ridicule over this scandal. Quite frankly, I am surprised to see them rallying behind someone who so clearly sold them out.
I was always struck by so many wonderful things about the MIT community.
They are a group of socially conscious forward thinkers who treat each other with a kindness and respect that is rare among college students. It is the most genuine community of caring and sharing I have ever encountered.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, many will point to the school’s appalling negligence in allowing itself to be made the victim of such a transparent hoax. To some it will reinforce the negative stereotype of MIT as a place where people can calculate Pi to a thousand decimal places but lack basic common sense.</p>
<p>Harvard will probably need to recruit some new “Faculty” for this seminar</p>
<p>Here’s the profile listed for Marilee
</p>
<p>More interestingly, Marilee is the only Admissions Dean whose name I recognize.</p>
<p>Considering her 28 Year Old CONTINUING FRAUD in claiming to have degrees that she did not earn, it is a mystery that she put herself into the limelight, with frequent public appearances, interviews on NPR, in the Boston Globe and New York Times and now a book.</p>
<p>Guess she wanted to be found out.</p>
<p>In contrast most Admissions Deans are relatively unknown.</p>
<hr>
<p>Just for fun</p>
<p>Try to match the Dean with the Institution</p>
<p>Jane B Brown</p>
<p>William R Fitzsimmonds</p>
<p>Edward M Gillis</p>
<p>Fred A Hagardon</p>
<p>Carol Lukenheimer</p>
<p>Jim Miller</p>
<p>Janet Laven Rapelye</p>
<p>Richard H Shaw Jr.</p>
<p>Theodore L Spencer</p>
<p>Lee Stetson
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Institutions:</p>
<p>Brown University</p>
<p>Harvard University</p>
<p>University of Miami</p>
<p>University of Michigan</p>
<p>Mount Holyoke College</p>
<p>Northwestern University</p>
<p>University of Pennsylvania</p>
<p>Princeton University</p>
<p>Stanford University</p>
<p>Former Dean of Princeton University, Stanford University and Swarthmore College</p>
<p>After You make your matches you can follow the link to check your score :)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sica/faculty.htm[/url]”>http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sica/faculty.htm</a></p>
<p>latetoschool: Your lack of a degree should never be an embarrassment ot source of trouble to you. The fact that you are invited to speak often and have other achievements is a testament to your inate abilities and talents. I know numerous college graduates who are complete jerks in life. Let us not forget that Bill Gates left before getting his degree - this is not shameful by any measure - not owning up to it and perpetuating a fraudulent bio is. Best of luck in whatever path you pursue.</p>
<p>It is patently ridiculous how people on this board want to take down the women and URMs (of which I am one) admitted to MIT during Marilee’s tenure. Where is your proof, anecdotal or statistical, that these students, who you claim did not belong there, did significantly worse, both at MIT and in their careers, than the stereotypical MIT students. Regardless of what you might think of affirmative action, I think that these students have shown that they can hack it too, and don’t deserve this criticism.</p>
<p>She will do very well. In fact, I suspect that she will do better than she did as Admission’s dean of MIT.</p>
<p>First, she probably will get a pension
Second, she will probably consult with kids that want to improve or at least evaluate their chances of geting into schools such as MIT et al. If you had a MIT caliber kid, wouldn’t you pay her to help improve your kid’s application? I would for sure.</p>
<p>No. I wouldn’t.</p>
<p>MIT did the right thing in publicizing this and asking Jones to leave. But to those on this board who have been trying to argue that Jones had instituted a policy of admitting less qualified females, I have to say you’re wrong. My daughter was recently admitted to MIT. But every other place she applied admitted her too, including Yale, Princeton, Harvard, and other top schools. I’d challenge any other applicant to put his or her credentials against hers and argue that she is somehow “less qualified” because she was admitted under Jones’s tenure, or because she’s female. Last week, she decided to come to MIT. I hope that the males in the community there won’t be “second guessing” her qualifications, as have some on this board. If you’re a male and you didn’t get in, or you’re a parent and your son didn’t get in, I’m sorry about that, but your scores – or your son’s scores – aren’t higher, grades aren’t better, and the extracurriculars probably aren’t more impressive.</p>
<p>As far as I’m able to determine, I don’t think she admitted very many under-qualified applicants during her tenure. The standards weren’t actually lowered. She just gave a lot of lip service to the idea of lowering them. In her crusade to supposedly de-stress the application process she kept saying how she wanted kids to go out and smell flowers and write poetry instead of study for their SATs. But in practice MIT just kept on taking the applicants with stratospheric grades, scores, and ECs. </p>
<p>So the quality of MIT students didn’t actually go down thanks her. It’s more a case of her big kinder-gentler admissions initiative being so much PR fluff with no real change in policy. As I recall her big reform breakthrough was removing the number of lines on the MIT app in the academic honors section - what a paradigm shift!</p>
<p>I criticized it at the time right here on CC as an empty gesture - a phony reform. Now it turns out not to have been the only phony thing operating at MIT admissions.</p>
<p>I don’t think it makes any sense whatsoever to speculate on the quality of admissions at MIT over the past several years and it certainly makes no sense to compare one student over another. At ANY college one can probably find countless examples of one person getting rejected and another being admitted with apparent lower stats. What is missing is the “whole picture” - first, the complete package of the individual applicant, including essays, recommendations, outcome of interviews, etc., as well as the entire admitted “class”. This “my student is better than yours” or even “my application was better than his/hers and he got accepted and I got rejected” is inappropriate, etc. I would think that if the “quality” of the admitted class really did decline under Jones’ tenure that professors would have been speaking up about the quality of freshman students in their classes, or some other evidence would be coming out in the numbers (graduation rates, etc.) and that hasn’t happened, or if it has it’s not evident to me. </p>
<p>Sewbusy, thanks for that, but, it works on me nevertheless. I even sort of think that delaying providing a bio on request or for that matter designing one in the manner we have - intentionally architecting the page layout so that it appears as if we simply ran out of room before getting to the point where education would ordinarily be listed is, well, a different sort of “lying”, if you will. But it’s the best I can do at the moment, and Calmom has pointed me to a more productive and interesting solution. I could never, ever “invent” a degree - I would not be able to sleep at night, plus, I’m such a ditz and so disorganized at times, I would forget what lie I told, get confused, tangle it up and tell some different lie later, goof it all up and contradict myself, etc. - I’d be caught in like three weeks, would not be able to pull it off for 30 years as did Marliee. Can you imagine the effort it must take over that period of time to support the lie of three degrees? I’m imagining, how do you participate in conversations with people that would go down the road of “when I was in college, we…” or “I remember MY freshman year when we…” or “at MY graduation, it rained…” - and so on. I mean, especially on a college campus, casual conversations like this must surely be a normal event, sort of like water-cooler gossip in corporations, so, did Marilee lie casually, again and again and again, on a daily basis? If so, that had to simply take an extraordinary amount of energy, and a strong intent to willingly defraud everyone.</p>
<p>I’m imagining, too, did she have her daughter lie on her college applications? I’m remembering when my daughter was filling out her college applications - in my house, over the years, my communications with my daughter have always been along the lines of “WHEN you go to college” vs. “IF you go to college”, so, over the years, “college” has been this place where everyone goes, period. I never told my daughter I did not go, but I also never told her I did go, either - it was just, college is what everyone does, and this is what you will do, too. </p>
<p>So she fills out her very first application, and, comes to me and says “mom, the form asks for the name of parent’s college, and your degree”. I responded that I have not been to college and have no degree, and that is how she should answer the form. Sort of shocked silence followed; then, my daughter clarified with “you haven’t been to college”??? I simply answered “that’s correct, and that is how you will answer the form”, and, I said it in this tone of voice that conveyed the message “do not question me further, end of discussion” that I am sure every parent has probably used at least once at some point over the course of raising a child (this is the only time I have ever used this tone). So I am wondering how Marilee’s daughter answered this question on applications, and, if it will have some deleterious impact for her - probably not, because I guess the advantage is weighted for students who are first generation college students…still, it makes me wonder what is the potential fallout beyond the person initiating the fraud.</p>
<p>I work at a college that to say the least, is NOT world-famous. Every 3 years ALL employees (both faculty and staff) are required to not just resubmit updated resumes but also to order official transcripts from their colleges that they claim granted them a degree. Perhaps if MIT had done this, this deceitful woman’s lies would have been discovered a long time ago.</p>
<p>LTS … you really shouldn’t be so embarrassed. My mom dropped out of college to marry my dad – she was a sophomore, age 19 – so I grew up knowing that she didn’t have a degree. Like you, she raised me as if it were a foregone conclusion that I would go to college – I never knew it was a choice until after I got to college and met kids whose had to pay their own way because their parents didn’t want them to go. But my mom also made it very clear to me that while she did not regret marrying my father, she very much regretted not having gotten a degree, and that she felt it had limited her options in life in many ways. I’m sure if you had opted to let your daughter know of the hardships you faced along the way that you wouldn’t have had to use a “don’t ask” tone – I mean, sometimes the best way to help our kids learn from our mistakes is to be open about them. In any case, I know it doesn’t matter now - your daughter is getting ready for grad school, so the college part is done (for her). </p>
<p>But again – you don’t have to be embarrassed. I don’t think you are fooling anyone with that long bio – most people put their degrees first thing, near the top, so burying it down at the bottom of the page isn’t going to work. The point is, you are being asked to speak or honored because of your accomplishments and because the people respect you already – they aren’t going to change their minds because of some degree you don’t have. Think about what the 10 things you have done in your career that you are most proud of --and then create a bio that describes 5 or 6 of them and you should be fine.</p>