Marilee Jones's career had been a remarkable success. She joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) admissions office in 1979, landing a job in Cambridge at a time when boys ruled the sandbox of the admissions profession. Her job was to help MIT recruit more women, who then made up less than one-fifth of the institute's students. She became MIT's admissions dean in 1997 and emerged as an outspoken defender of students' well-being, a dean who was more likely to talk about the looks on the faces of anxious applicants than about MIT's yield rate. Jones won fans for her frank talks at admissions conferences and high schools. Late last month, Jones, 55, resigned as dean of admissions at the MIT after admitting that she had falsified her resume. In a statement on the institute's Web site, Jones said she had misrepresented her academic degrees when she first applied for a job at MIT 28 years ago and "did not have the courage to correct her resume when she applied for her current job or at any time since." Nobody in academe condones Jones's deceit. However, some of her longtime admirers worry that her message will lose its resonance in the aftermath of her resignation.