【美媒】申请美国大学的几则好消息

发布时间：2014-07-11     来源：美国留学

 Reasons for Hope While Applying to College

关于申请美国大学的几则好消息

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The bad news for students applying to selective colleges is that getting accepted to any one of them really is harder than it used to be. Many colleges have reduced the number of American teenagers they accept (in order to globalize their student bodies) at the same time that the American teenage population is growing, as I wrote last week.

对于申请名牌大学的学生来说，坏消息是，现在获得任何一所名牌大学的录取书确实比以前难了。很多高校都在削减美国学生的录取名额(以便提高学生群体的全球化程度)，与此同时美国青少年的人数却在增加，这个现象我已经在上周写过了。

But there is some good news, too, and it’s worth spending a few minutes on it. It sheds some light on the right way for high school students to think about the application process.

但是也有一些好消息，值得花几分钟时间来讲讲。这些消息有助于高中生正确考虑大学的申请过程。

First, amid all the anxiety over this subject, students should remember that the college you attend matters less than many people think it does. Research has shown that students with similar SAT scores who attended different colleges — say, Stanford and the University of California, Davis — have statistically identical incomes. (Low-income students are the exception; the college they attend does seem to matter.) Yes, Harvard graduates make high salaries on average, but it doesn’t seem to be because they went to Harvard.

首先，尽管申请大学会引发种种忧虑，但是学生们要明白，就读哪所大学，其实没有很多人以为的那么重要。研究表明，SAT成绩相似的学生，就算进入不同的院校——比如斯坦福大学(Stanford)和加州大学戴维斯分校(University of California, Davis)，从统计数据来看，他们的收入也大致相当。(低收入家庭的学生属于例外，就读哪所大学对他们似乎的确有影响。)确实，哈佛大学(Harvard)毕业生的平均工资更高，但这似乎并不是因为他们上了哈佛。

I recognize that this research will not convince many teenagers and their parents. They’ll still care enormously about the admissions process. So another bit of encouraging news is also worth considering: Even if an individual college is harder to get into, there seem to be more total spots at excellent colleges.

我承认，很多学生和父母不会相信这项研究，他们还是会非常关心录取过程。所以，另一个令人鼓舞的消息也值得考虑：尽管进入某所特定的大学更难了，但总体来说，优秀院校的招生总数似乎增加了。

Over the same period that colleges like Harvard and Stanford have been admitting more foreign students, several other changes in higher education have also been occurring. High school seniors, for their part, have started applying to more colleges than in the past. In the 1970s or 1980s, a top student from North Carolina might have applied to a couple of public colleges in the state, Duke, Wake Forest and maybe one college in the Northeast. Today, that student may apply to those schools as well as, say, Princeton, Macalester, Pomona, Vanderbilt and the University of Chicago.

哈佛和斯坦福这样的大学，确实开始录取更多的外国学生，但与此同时，高等教育也出现了其他一些变化。高中毕业班的学生，申请的院校数要比过去多。在20世纪70年代或80年代，北卡罗莱纳州的尖子生可能会申请该州的几所公立大学，杜克大学(Duke)，维克森林大学(Wake Forest)，也许还会申请一所东北部的高校。如今，这样的学生可能还会申请普林斯顿(Princeton)、马克莱斯特学院(Macalester)、波莫纳学院(Pomona)、范德堡大学(Vanderbilt)和芝加哥大学(University of Chicago)。

This change has effectively nationalized the higher-education market. Harvard has fewer students from the Northeast than it used to, and colleges in the Midwest or South have fewer from their home regions. As a result, colleges like Vanderbilt and Rice are more national and less regional than they used to be.

这种变化实际上已经使高等教育的市场全国化了。哈佛大学来自东北部学生比以前少，中西部或南部的高校来自本地的学生与以前相比也减少了。因此，范德堡大学和莱斯大学(Rice)这样的高校不再具有以往的地区性，而是变得更加全国化了。

And some of the colleges that have most successfully made the leap from regional to national have substantial enrollments, like N.Y.U. and the University of Southern California. These colleges are almost like new entrants into the national higher-education market, increasing the number of available spots. At many elite high schools — public and private — 20 years ago, no seniors would even have applied to N.Y.U. or U.S.C. Today, they have become dream destinations for some students at those high schools.

一些非常成功地实现了从地区性到全国性跨越的高校，比如纽约大学(NYU)和南加州大学(University of Southern California)，它们的招生量相当大。这两所大学几乎是刚刚进入全国性的高等教育市场，它们都扩大了招生人数。20年前，很多精英高中——包括公立和私立高中——没有哪个毕业班的学生会申请纽约大学或南加州大学。但如今，进入这两所大学已经成为精英学校学生的梦想。

Put it all together, and the number of top colleges that any given student can consider has grown.

综合这些因素，任何一名特定的学生可以申请的优秀院校数就增加了。

“In the old days, kids would think, ‘What is the right school for me?'” said John Katzman, who founded the Princeton Review, “and then work hard to be the kids that school wanted.”

“过去，孩子们会想，‘我应该去哪所学校?’然后努力成为那所学校想录取的那种学生。”普林斯顿评论(Princeton Review)创始人约翰·卡茨曼(John Katzman)说。

Today, he said, students should worry less about shaping themselves to fit a specific college (or pretending to, in their application). They should instead pursue their own interests and look for a group of colleges that might be a good fit, without falling in love with a single one.

他说，现在的学生不用再那么关注于改造自己，去适应某所大​​学(或在申请书中假装成这样)。学生应该追求自己的爱好兴趣，并且多考虑几所可能符合这些爱好的院校，而不要牢牢盯着某一所。

“You can’t try to be perfect for all of them,” said Mr. Katzman, who now runs Noodle, a company that provides advice on education decisions. “You have to think of this as a probability cloud and handle it in a statistically rigorous way.”

“你不可能尝试做到对所有院校都十全十美，”卡茨曼说，他现在经营的Noodle公司提供有关教育决策的咨询。“你要把它想象成一个‘概率云’，以严谨的统计方法来对待它。”

There is one more reason to remain upbeat about an application process that can often feel stressful and difficult: When it’s all over, you get to go to college.

学生在申请大学的过程中往往会遭遇压力和困难，但还有另一个理由来帮助你保持乐观：这一切都结束后，你就可以去上大学了。

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