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> No question she was good at her job Out of curiosity, why do you say so? Not that the dishonesty would make her necessarily bad at her job, but what made her

> No question she was good at her job Out of curiosity, why do you say so? Not that the dishonesty would make her necessarily bad at her job, but what made her good at it?

jlev 14y ago
She understood the institute culture, and helped build a student cohort each year that reflected and preserved it. I still think it's a damn shame she had to leave. - MIT '07 & '10
tomkarlo 14y ago
She picked me off the waitlist. Really - she was the Dean of Admissions for a very long time (I think she was at MIT for 28 years overall, something like that) and while I can't remember her personally any more, I know that she had a strong rep both inside the administration and in the related professional community as well. If you're going to be Dean of Admissions, I'd have to think MIT is one of the most prestigious schools in the country for that post, especially when you consider it doesn't allocate large quotas to legacies the way some other top schools do.
- brandnewlow 14y ago
  Former Ivy Admissions officer who was at Princeton the year before she resigned from MIT. Elite College Admissions is a really strange scene. There are Masters degrees and other credentials that people earn to move up to deanship's, but the actual job itself is completely bureaucratic and mechanical in nature. There were people in my office who'd been there for 20 years and sure, they'd read a lot more applications than me, but they had basically the same exact job as I did. Read applications, visit schools, vote on students twice a year. So the concept of needing a fancy degree to do the job always seemed pretty funny.
- alecbenzer 14y ago
  Well, while I do think the idea of giving priority to legacies is pretty stupid and give MIT credit for that, I have other problems with their admissions process (I'm admittedly a bit biased as an MIT reject -- though to be fair it would sound like you are too). I know a decent amount of people at MIT, and while some of them definitely deserve to be there, there are a lot of others that I think don't, and got in for what I think are pretty superficial reasons.

> No question she was good at her job Out of curiosity, why do you say so? Not that the dishonesty would make her necessarily bad at her job, but what made her good at it?

jlev 14y ago

She understood the institute culture, and helped build a student cohort each year that reflected and preserved it. I still think it's a damn shame she had to leave. - MIT '07 & '10

tomkarlo 14y ago

She picked me off the waitlist. Really - she was the Dean of Admissions for a very long time (I think she was at MIT for 28 years overall, something like that) and while I can't remember her personally any more, I know that she had a strong rep both inside the administration and in the related professional community as well. If you're going to be Dean of Admissions, I'd have to think MIT is one of the most prestigious schools in the country for that post, especially when you consider it doesn't allocate large quotas to legacies the way some other top schools do.

brandnewlow 14y ago
Former Ivy Admissions officer who was at Princeton the year before she resigned from MIT. Elite College Admissions is a really strange scene. There are Masters degrees and other credentials that people earn to move up to deanship's, but the actual job itself is completely bureaucratic and mechanical in nature. There were people in my office who'd been there for 20 years and sure, they'd read a lot more applications than me, but they had basically the same exact job as I did. Read applications, visit schools, vote on students twice a year. So the concept of needing a fancy degree to do the job always seemed pretty funny.
alecbenzer 14y ago
Well, while I do think the idea of giving priority to legacies is pretty stupid and give MIT credit for that, I have other problems with their admissions process (I'm admittedly a bit biased as an MIT reject -- though to be fair it would sound like you are too). I know a decent amount of people at MIT, and while some of them definitely deserve to be there, there are a lot of others that I think don't, and got in for what I think are pretty superficial reasons.