Marilee Jones

She's my favorite news story of the week. In case you haven't been paying attention, here's the relevant background info:

Marilee Jones was the dean of admissions at MIT. She's become quite the big name among circles of striving suburban parents because she speaks out against the high stakes/high pressure college admissions process. MIT still rejects 9 out of every 10 applicants, but because of her influence, they've made tweaks like not weighing the SAT quite as heavily. Anyway, it turns out that this spokesperson for easing the pressure on high school seniors to have increasingly impressive resumes lied on her resume. big time. She claimed to have 3 college degrees that she just didn't have.

Anyway, that story was great enough, because it looked like she didn't have a college degree at all (she wasn't providing evidence of one). So here's this high powered Administrator at one of the most selective schools of the country, making or breaking the dreams of thousands of college applicants, and she doesn't even have a diploma.

But this article says she does have a degree. It's from some small Catholic school in Upstate NY. This raises the question of why she even lied in the first place. After all, the first job she applied to at MIT only required a Bachelor's, and it turns out, she had one. The even better question, though, is why didn't she mention this degree when people asked her if she had any degrees at all? Because you see, MIT found out about this one through an anonymous tip.

My only conclusion is that there must be some glamorous story behind it all, possibly involving the witness protection program, mob connections, and a savant-like ability to pick up and master new professions at will à la The Pretender.