MIT admissions dean resigns over resume fraud. Ouch!

Parents Forum
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<p>“I can definitely see why athletics can be equally weighted with academics, both on the one to five scale.”</p>

<p>I think athleticism is a valuable quality to have–I just don’t think it makes much sense to select for it at a university like MIT. My guess is your son’s athleticism didn’t help his admission much at all. I always thought it was a tip factor between candidates that they couldn’t tell who was smarter or more motivated academically. </p>

<p>Anyway, it’s pointless to comment on it without an adcomm officer confirming or denying it.</p>

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<p>Percy:</p>

<p>That means nothing. Under the old guidelines the last admitted student would still have made into MENSA. Hardly any lowering of standards! Anybody with a lower than 700 SAT M score had other strong factors predictive of success at MIT. High SAT II scores, strong AP results, competition awards. It is not all unusual to have students with 800 M and less than 700 in CR. Less common at MIT than in the Ivies for instance, but still present, are the 800 CR and 700 M combos.</p>

<p>MIT by its nature attracts highly lopsided students with a common creative thread. Not all students major in math or physics. When MIT looks for true potential in math it could not care less about your SAT score. If you score over 7 or 8 on the AIME and competed at the USAMO level now you are talking! </p>

<p>If it really wanted to MIT could fill its class with just math superstars and just take the top 1,000 scorers on the AMC12/AIME. Many of them apply and with MIT’s yield most of them would enroll if admitted. But MIT is not the American Institute of Mathematics. </p>

<p>Even in engineering which is the core of MIT’s strength, the faculty looks at a lot more than SAT scores for admission. Quite a few admitted students are actually not superstars in math in HS, at field they often find boring. They would rather spend their time building an airplane or a new computer. While MIT has not bought into the OLIN philosophy where hardcore science is rejected in favor of a purely practical approach to engineering, it does recognize that capability to solve a problem to which nobody has found a solution and ability to pick an answer from multiple choice tests are quite different things altogether. </p>

<p>MIT also has world renowned departments in physics, chemistry, biology, economics, linguistics and philosophy. The biology faculty with several Nobel Prize winners wants students strong and enthusiastic about their field. So do the chemistry and economics departments. They will never agree to a formula for admission based on a single SAT measure. The faculty ensures it gets the right class by setting the admissions policies. </p>

<p>MIT like many other universities, is seeing tremendous growth in the life sciences similar to what they went through in computer sciences field in the 80s and 90s. MIT is now attracting not just biomedical engineers, but also a lot of premeds. It is important to MIT that these students do well at getting admitted to the top medical schools. And unlike students at most other tech schools MIT students have done very well in those fields. Why is that? The faculty in the biology, chemistry and BCS (neuroscience) departments who are the primary feeders to medical schools at MIT, makes sure that it gets enough students with the right profile to excel in those fields. Same thing with the economics department and admission to business schools. It uses different criteria from the other departments and needs students that are also good writers.</p>

<p>Finally, where you argument is most repugnant, is when you assert that by definition women and URMs admitted will lower the standards of the institute. That is simply eugenics at its lowest level. Somehow, according to your scheme, they are genetically incapable of performing at the top levels. </p>

<p>Maybe you should wake up and look at the reality rather than rely on discredited concepts. First, women are cleaning the clock of men in high school, beating them in college and starting to outperform them in professional and graduate school. If anything men will be the ones needing AA in the next decades. While it is still true that men statistically outperform women in mathematics, when measured three standard deviations out, MIT has no problem finding enough top female applicants among the 11,000+ women that score above 750 on the SAT M in the US. </p>

<p>As far as URMs, even though some portion of them may have SAT scores in the lower 10% of scores of admitted students, they are pretty much all in the top 2% of their class and top 97% nationally on SAT scores. With no athletic consideration to drive the admissions process, MIT can focus on attracting intellectual overachievers from all backgrounds. Most URMs perform exceptionally well at MIT once provided with an educational support structure completely lacking in high school. If the system was not working it would have been corrected long ago. As I stated earlier, the curriculum at MIT is just too rigorous to permit admitting students who won’t succeed academically.</p>

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<h2>I find the dimension of “social skills” (Jones’ quote above) interesting. I had never thought this way before; makes for some deep thinking on how to present certain aspects on one’s application.</h2>

<p>I find this quote somewhat disturbing. I would have done ok, I guess–I was elected to student govt. However, the people in the adcomm office (Marilee and Ben Jones, Matt Mcgann) seem like total extroverts. I wonder if introverts are hurt in this process because they don’t connect with the adcomm.</p>

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<p>cellardweller: the same qualities that make you good at math make you good at science. There are a few engineering disciplines which have an extra component–your ability to build things with your hands is important for a real mechanical engineer.</p>

<p>The reason why taking the top 1000 people in AMC doesn’t make sense is because:

  1. those people may concentrate their reasoning ability into another scientific discipline, although certainly they should still ace their math classes and do ok on the AMC
  2. may not know about the AMC or take the exam
  3. may have mathematical potential but their exposure to math may be limited due to a bad school</p>

<p>However, your average valedictorian has no chance to make USAMO no matter how hard they study. Given that only about 100 USAMO qualifiers graduate in a given year and that they will be split between the top universities (so mit may only get 30 or so), I would lean heavily toward admitting them as long as their academic performance is great.</p>

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<p>“Of course. I’m not saying SAT scores don’t matter at all, or that they shouldn’t be used. I’m just noting that I think an SAT-only admissions process would border on the absurd and useless.”</p>

<p>I’m not at all sure that an SAT only policy would be “absurd and useless”. As others have stated, SET uses an “SAT only” policy and their kids as a group do extremely well when you track them retrospectively. It seems to me that there’s no perfect measure for predicting future college success but that a high SAT score is more predictive than say SAT combined with skin color or gender - it’s the current system that seems absurd and useless to me. The admissions people BTW have no problem using SAT for intra-group comparison purposes and no problem setting a minimum of circa 700. It’s only when you get down to the very end, to that last 100 pts where going strictly by SAT would mess up their ability to “balance” the racial and gender demographics of the class that SAT suddenly becomes “absurd and useless”. Funny, isn’t it. As I said before, it all comes down to that photo and who is in the picture and who is missing from it. It’s my hypothesis that if all Americans were one race (and gender), MIT would have no problem at all using an almost purely objective criteria (grades, scores, etc.) based admissions system as is done in other countries with a homogeneous racial composition. Creativity, blah blah blah has almost nothing to do with it.</p>

<p>I stand by my remark that the MIT admissions policy is “racist” and I’ll throw in “sexist” too. We’ve had that discussion before but one of the definitions of “racism” is “discrimination based on race” and MIT is admittedly doing this. The argument that it’s not “racism” if you are discriminating “in favor” of, or in order to “help”, a certain group doesn’t hold water in a zero sum game like admissions - if you are “helping” one race or gender then you are “hurting” another. </p>

<p>It’s true that Marilee was and is by no means alone in her views (in fact well within the mainstream of academia if not the general population) but she was certainly a part of the current “racist” system and her own employment a symbol of the topsy turvy world of double standards that has grown up in the last 30 years. To bring this back on point, do you think a white male could have gotten away with the same kind of resume fraud without ever being checked or ever been appointed admissions dean after starting from a clerical position, even with Marilee’s (fictional) credentials? Or did political correctness cause the MIT administration to step lightly when dealing with Marilee and her many promotions thru the years?</p>

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<p>The one recurring social skill we have been told to look for specifically among candidates at MIT is the ability to work in teams. So much of the work , especially the first year requires working in groups to solve p-sets. MIT is concerned that a loner may not fit well in the MIT culture. Most students have never experienced failure (at least academically) before entering MIT. Some take less well than others the shock of getting poor grades on tests. That is partly why MIT always has these essay questions on how the candidate had to overcome adversity. The intensity of the work is also such that the mental health of the student becomes an important factor. So, yes, MIT will look for clues on social skills, but that again is something that could be held against a candidate nearly at any level of academic qualification.</p>

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<p>Well, the SAT only policy would only work if you selected for people that scored above 1400 by age 13. They may not win the Nobel Prize, but I’ve met enough of these kids to know that they almost always become MIT level. It’s not a practical thing to do anyway.</p>

<p>The SAT is too easy to use as a selector for 18-year olds beyond giving an advantage to those in the 750-800 range.</p>

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<h2>To bring this back on point, do you think a white male could have gotten away with the same kind of resume fraud without ever being checked or ever been appointed admissions dean after starting from a clerical position, even with Marilee’s (fictional) credentials? Or did political correctness cause the MIT administration to step lightly when dealing with Marilee and her many promotions thru the years?</h2>

<p>This is going too far. I’m sure they would have fired her earlier had it come to their attention.</p>

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<p>“when measured three standard deviations out, MIT has no problem finding enough top female applicants among the 11,000+ women that score above 750 on the SAT M in the US.”</p>

<p>What about top African American applicants? Why don’t you give us the number above 750M for that group? I will - it’s around 250 each year for the whole country. Can you truthfully tell me that MIT has “no problem” finding 80 of those 250 (1/3 of the entire group) to come to MIT each year?</p>

<p>You’re right that AA will soon be “needed” for men (if we apply the current absurd system where the race and gender balance of every school has to approximate that of the whole country). Already at non-technical schools women outnumber men in college. Will you still support it when that time comes at MIT?</p>

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<p>I’m not disputing that they would have fired her earlier if they had learned of the fraud earlier. Their hand was forced - whoever called the office to dispute her credentials would have gone to the press next if they had done nothing, and they knew this. </p>

<p>BUT, how did Marilee get to be Dean in the first place and would a man who had been hired for her original job ever have been promoted all the way to Dean? And no checking ever done on him?</p>

<p>BTW, given what we now know about Marilee’s true degree, I think she might have actually had a chance of saving her job very early on - if say six months after she was hired she confessed and explained that insecurity made me claim something that wasn’t true and can I keep my clerical job - I do have a college degree, just not from the one I put on my resume, they might have let her stay. But they would have never ever promoted her to Dean, especially without the additional fictional graduate degrees that she added later. So ultimately her fraud paid off, big time - not exactly the lesson you want MIT students to draw, eh?</p>

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<p>collegealum, yes, sometimes it hurts more than others regarding the use of subjective criteria. I wonder if education counselors should encourage students to try to increase their social skills… Dale Carnegie (Warren Buffet is quoted in TIME this week saying their course helped immensely), Charm School (interestingly, MIT offers this during IAP), leadership seminars, goal setting (leadership positions), Arthur Murray (for confidence-building, grace), etc.</p>

<p>Defining and weighting this dimension would be a difficult task, I think. I also wonder if college interviewers are ever asked to rate this dimension, and if so, how? Perhaps teacher recs should note these traits, if applicable to the applicant, if they aren’t already doing so.</p>

<p>Far off the beaten track, aren’t we.</p>

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<p>Collegalumn:</p>

<p>I generally agree with you that strength in mathematics does help for a number of scientific disciplines, particularly physics and economics. Much less so in chemistry or biology. But it certainly does not correlate in any linear fashion. Other skills such a resilience, ingenuity or patience often become paramount. Einstein and Feynman are good examples. Neither was anywhere near a superstar in math and both considered the field somewhat of a purposeless endeavour. (That was until they both needed advanced mathematics for their later works)</p>

<p>My main point was just that MIT uses the AMC/AIME score when available as more of a predictor of mathematical ability than an SAT score. And MIT does give an academic superstar status to anybody scoring over a 7 on the AIME, pretty much guaranteeing admission.</p>

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<p>

No…Einstein scored very well in math throughout secondary school, and his early works are still pretty mathematically intensive - even before GR. I think Feynman won the Putnum outright (at MIT!) as well. I don’t think you could be much further from the truth here.</p>

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<p>Mathematical skill doesn’t help you in chem/bio for the most part.</p>

<p>However, the reasoning ability, the ability to discern subtle points, and creativity and deep thinking that makes one great at math also is what makes you a star in chem/bio. It’s true that there is an added requirement for meticulousness of lab technique in chem/bio, too.</p>

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<h2>No…Einstein scored very well in math throughout secondary school, and his early works are still pretty mathematically intensive - even before GR. I think Feynman won the Putnum outright (at MIT!) as well. I don’t think you could be much further from the truth here.</h2>

<p>Yeah, you are correct. Feynman won the Putnam in '39. He also got a perfect score in math and physics on the entrance exam for graduate school at Princeton (not the GRE, it was given at Princeton.) This was unprecedented.</p>

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<p>cellardweller said, "Neither was anywhere near a superstar in math and both considered the field somewhat of a purposeless endeavour. "</p>

<p>Einstein’s greatest love was for mathematics, but he was not able to devote enough time to it because of the demands to further the fields of both theoretical and applied physics (ie, bomb-making) and then later, because of the demands of teaching at Princeton.</p>

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<p>HappyPoet:</p>

<p>Maybe you should read latest Einstein’s biography. </p>

<p>While it is true that Einstein was decent in math in high school, it is also a fact that he was a mediocre math student while at ETH in Switzerland where he received his bachelor’s degree. He couldn’t even get a rec letter from his math teacher for an assistant teaching job. Late in his twenties he had to be tutored extensively on tensorial calculus by former college buddies to finally come with his equations on general relativity. Nobody considered him a strong mathematician at the time. There is even extensive litterature on how Hilbert, the famous German mathematician may actually have come up with the equations on general relativity before Einstein. (Even though the ideas were clearly Einstein’s). His famous quip was “Everybody in Goettingen (the center of advanced mathematics at the time) knows more about mathematics than Dr. Einstein”.</p>

<p>As far as Feynman</p>

<p>

James Gleick. (1992). Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman.</p>

<p>I guess even in those days, MIT used holistic admissions. If the SAT had been used, neither MIT nor Caltech would have had the benefit of his wisdom. Under the Percy formula he would have lowered the level of his class too much and should never have been admitted. Maybe Marilee Jones never invented anything after all!</p>

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<p>MIT doesn’t ask your IQ.</p>

<p>I know that Feyman won the award for every subject area in his high school–even english, which he despised. (It was in one of Feynman’s autobiographies.)</p>

<p>As for Einstein, I have heard there was some politics involved in his problems getting a faculty position. Also, secondary school mathematics in the 19th century was more about memorizing engineering algorithms–it’s not very similar to today’s secondary education. BTW, when they recently analyzed Einstein’s brain, they found that the part for mathematical reasoning (inferior parietal region) was 15% wider than normal brains.</p>

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<p>Re: Post 1397:
Well, the Wikipedia entry presents things differently.</p>

<p>In high school he was bright, with a measured IQ of 125:[5] high, but “merely respectable” according to biographer Gleick.[5] He would later scoff at psychometric testing. By 15, he had mastered differential and integral calculus. Before entering college, he was experimenting with and re-creating mathematical topics, such as the half-derivative, utilizing his own notation. Thus, while in high school, he was developing the mathematical intuition behind his Taylor series of mathematical operators. His habit of direct characterization would sometimes disconcert more conventional thinkers; for example, one of his questions when learning feline anatomy was: “Do you have a map of the cat?” (referring to an anatomical chart).</p>

<p>In his last year at Far Rockaway High School, Feynman won the New York University Math Championship. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1939, and in the same year was named a Putnam Fellow. While there, Feynman took every physics course offered, including a graduate course on theoretical physics while only in his second year. He obtained a perfect score on the entrance exams to Princeton University in mathematics and physics — an unprecedented feat — but did rather poorly on the history and English portions.
<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Just to be clear, my earlier Satanist story was, in fact, about SET, not CTY. The student in question was very precocious.</p>