Marilee Jones was an inspiration to students, using her position as the dean of admissions at one of America's most prestigious universities to reform its bruising application process and telling high schools and parents across the country not to place unrealistic pressures on their children.

But there was one thing she didn't mention: that she lied to get ahead.

Ms Jones, known for her red hair and admired for her blunt, refreshing views, resigned yesterday from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, three days after the university discovered that her own CV, submitted with a job application 28 years ago, had "misrepresented her academic degrees".

According to The Tech, MIT's campus newspaper, Ms Jones was confronted in a meeting on Monday after an anonymous caller had contacted the university about her false credentials. In her CV and subsequent biographies, Ms Jones had claimed to have received degrees from Union College, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Albany Medical College. None of which turned out to be true.

"This is a sad and unfortunate event," wrote Daniel E. Hastings, MIT's dean for undergraduate education in an e-mail to the university. "But the integrity of the Institute is our highest priority, and we cannot tolerate this kind of behaviour."

In her own statement, Ms Jones, the co-author of Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond, said that she had resigned "because very regrettably, I misled the Institute about my academic credentials".

"I misrepresented my academic degrees when I first applied to MIT 28 years ago and did not have the courage to correct my resume when I applied for my current job or at any time since. I am deeply sorry for this and for disappointing so many in the MIT community and beyond who supported me, believed in me, and who have given me extraordinary opportunities."

Ms Jones joined MIT's admissions office in a junior, administrative role in 1979. The university said yesterday that her job did not require a master's and a batchelor's degree, as she claimed to have, but those qualifications helped her rise to the position of dean, overseeing an admissions process that attracts more than 11,000 undergraduate applications each year, of which around 13 per cent are successful.

From the moment she became dean, in 1997, Ms Jones set about reforming MIT's application process, rewriting the form to place more emphasis on students' personalities and passions rather than their academic data and the relentless lists of extra-curricular activities that American high school students are encouraged to amass to impress prospective colleges.

In her book, she and Kenneth Ginsburg wrote: "As we prepare these paper-perfect students for higher education, are we undermining their ability to succeed in life? The most worrisome thing about this generation of driven students may be the fear of imperfection that's being instilled in their psyches.''

And in an address to other college admissions staff in Boston last year, Ms Jones said the quest for perfection in adolescent students was "making our children sick", and described the increase in suicides, ulcers and anxiety disorders among high-achieving teenage students.

"Kids aren't supposed to be finished," she said. "They're partial. They're raw. That's why we're in the business."

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