MIT Dean of Admissions Marilee Jones resigned after acknowledging fabricating her academic credentials when applying for an administrative assistant position in the seventies. Despite this, her advice on how the parents of high school juniors and seniors can reduce stress in the college admissions process is still spot on. Despite her resignation, every parent of a high school junior or senior should buy her book today.
I was lucky enough to receive Ms. Jones’s advice when she spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at our Boston area high school. For those not so lucky, you can obtain the advice in her book, Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond, coauthored with pediatrician Kenneth R. Ginsburg.
Parents – and their children – will benefit from Jones’s advice for two reasons:
- Jones explains WHY current parents are so hyper about the admissions process (mostly due to the fact that we parents are from the generation which mistakenly believes we can accomplish anything!)
- And Jones gives practical advice on HOW each parent can reduce their child’s stress in the admission process, including actions that can be easily implement right away.
I’m pleased to hear that her publisher stands behind the book. According to numerous published reports, MIT administrators who worked with Jones for the last 28 years are praising all she achieved while there. The advice in her book is based on these 28 years of achievements, not on an academic degree she did not obtain back in the Vietnam War era.
If Jones’s resignation causes you as a parent to not seek her advice you’ll be throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. And your baby – your high schooler – will be the loser. Despite Jones’s resignation, buy the book.
Change Agent 
2 May 2007 at 11:33 AM |
I’m going to buy it for *my* college bound son! Her work stands 100% untarnished.
We are a university family, and this is what I know: Academics do really ugly things, all of the time. They plagarize. Have affairs. Torpedo the careers of each other’s Ph.D students. And yes, quite often, they lie. MIT probably can’t re-absorb Marilee Jones, but “integrity” has very little to do with it. Jones is both an embarrassment and an iconoclast. She’s gotta go. In a fair world, though? Half the rest of ‘em would go with her.
But we’re still sending our son to college! And I want M.J’s autograph..
http://almostgotit.wordpress.com/
16 May 2007 at 7:51 AM |
I received the following comment by email:
Des, I was on the verge of putting together an Amazon shipment when I read your recommendation on this book. Threw it into the box, and then lent it to a friend. After one day, her response:
“By the way, that MIT book is really good; it is the first I’ve seen that makes sense to me.”
I look forward to reading it myself!
Anne
31 May 2007 at 5:08 PM |
[…] a part of the college application process. Though the American system is clearly broken (see my blog of 30 April on how to follow Marilee Jones’s advice and get through the process with your sanity […]