I saw this and thought the CC people would appreciate the humor.
Loved it!
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~john/resp.html
And MIT’s response about the John Mongan letter.
Apparently it is quite the oldie - this took place in 1994. Whatever happened to John Mongan?
There are several professionals named John Mongan. I am wondering if this is the same one though:
John Mongan, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Residence in the Abdominal Imaging and Ultrasound subspecialties in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at the University of California, San Francisco.
Did he go to MIT?
No. Stanford (Chemistry)
If you look at the bottom of the second link it says maintained by and John’s name and it has a Stanford email address so it probably is him.
Funny that this was posted yesterday on CC:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/17952338/#Comment_17952338
It is indeed an old story, and one that I fail to find particularly funny. It is similar to the “why a reject you” letter that surface about every May after RD notices. The sad part is that it probably created a number of copycats from students who did not have the wit or credentials of the original writer. Just as the infamous tortilla essay of GBS.
On a last note the student might have been happy that MIT had a different leader at that time. Who knows what Marilee Jones might have done with a voodoo doll!