How to Survive the College Admissions Madness

Frank Bruni

美国的高中毕业生和中国的一样，都面临着选择大学以及被大学选择的境遇。为了进入名牌大学、历史名校，学生们竭尽所能，不断努力，却不是都能得到理想大学的青睐。我们的未来是否就在此时此刻被决定了呢？失利者又该如何走出低谷，走向成功呢？本文作者将给你一些建议，或许还能让你重拾信心。

Here we go again. At Harvard, Emory, Bucknell and other schools around the country, there have been record numbers of applicants yearning for an elite degree.1. Emory: 埃默里大学，一所全美顶级私立研究性大学；Bucknell: 巴克内尔大学，美国一所私立文理大学；record: 创纪录的；yearn for: 渴求；elite: 精英的，卓越的。They’ll get word2. get word: 得到消息。in the next few weeks. Most will be turned down.

All should hear and heed3. heed: 注意，留意。the story of Peter Hart.

Peter didn’t try for the Ivy League4. Ivy League: 常春藤盟校，是由美国东北部地区的八所大学组成的体育赛事联盟，包括哈佛大学、耶鲁大学、普林斯顿大学、哥伦比亚大学、宾夕法尼亚大学、达特茅斯学院、布朗大学及康奈尔大学。除了这八所学校外，还有25所精英大学因其高质量的教育和不断取得的国际学术成就而受到越来越多学生和家长的青睐，被称为“新常春藤”院校。. That wasn’t the kind of student he’d been at New Trier High School, in an af fluent Chicago suburb.5. New Trier High School: 新特里尔中学，美国一所著名的公立高中；af fluent: 富裕的；suburb:郊区。Most of its graduating seniors go on to higher education, and most know, from where they stand among their peers, what sort of college they can hope to attend. A friend of Peter’s was ranked near the summit of their class; she set her sights on Yale—and ended up there. Peter was ranked in the top third, and aimed for the University of Michigan or maybe the special undergraduate business school at the University of Illinois.6. University of Michigan: 密歇根大学，美国历史上最悠久的公立大学之一；special undergraduate business school: 特设本科商学院；University of Illinois: 伊利诺伊大学，美国最具影响力的公立大学系统之一。

Both rejected him.

He went to Indiana University7. Indiana University: 印第安纳大学，美国最早期的综合研究型大学之一，是一所享有盛誉的明星级大学。instead. Right away he noticed a difference. At New Trier, a public school posh enough to pass for private,8. posh: 奢华的；pass for: 被看做；private: 私立学校。he’d always had a sense of himself as someone somewhat ordinary, at least in terms of his studies. At Indiana, though, the students in his freshman classes weren’t as showily gifted as the New Trier kids had been, and his self-image went through a transformation.

“I really felt like I was a competent person,” he told me last year, shortly after he’d turned 28. And he thrived9. thrive: 兴旺，成功。. He got into an honors program10. honors program: 荣誉课程，为程度较好的学生开设，课程较具深度，进度也较快，并强调高级思考。for undergraduate business majors. He became vice president of a business fraternity on campus.11. vice president: 副主席；fraternity: 兄弟会，联谊会。He cobbled together the capital to start a tiny real estate enterprise that fixed up and rented small houses to fellow students.12. cobble together: 拼凑到一起；capital: 资本；real estate enterprise: 房地产公司； fix up: 给（某人）安排住宿；fellow student: 同学。

And he finagled a way, off campus, to interview with several of the top-drawer consulting firms that trawled for recruits at the Ivies but often bypassed schools like Indiana.13. 他用蒙骗的方式在校外参加了好几个顶尖咨询公司的面试，这些公司经常在常春藤捞人，却忽略像印第安纳大学这样的学校。finagle: 用欺骗手段获得；off campus:在校外；top-drawer: 最顶级的，最重要的； trawl: 搜寻，搜罗；bypass: 忽略。Upon graduation, he took a plum job14. plum job: 肥差。in the Chicago of fice of the Boston Consulting Group,where he recognized one of the other new hires: the friend from New Trier who’d gone to Yale. Traveling a more gilded15. gilded: 镀金的。path, she’d arrived at the same destination.

He later decided to get a master’s degree in business administration, and that’s where he is now, in graduate school—at Harvard.

I don’t think Peter’s example is extraordinary: People bloom at various stages of life, and different individuals flourish in different climates.16. bloom: 兴旺，处于繁盛时期； flourish: 兴旺，成功；climate:（某一社会、时期的）风气，环境气氛。For every person whose contentment comes from faithfully executing a predetermined script, there are at least 10 if not 100 who had to rearrange the pages and play a part they hadn’t expected to, in a theater they hadn’t envisioned.17. 如果一个人的满足感源于如实地执行预定剧本的话，那么在这个过程中，即使没有100个人，也至少有10个人会不得不重新改编剧本，在意料之外的剧作中扮演着始料未及的角色。execute: 执行；script: 剧本；rearrange: 重新整理；envision: 预想，期望。Besides, life is de fined by setbacks,and success is determined by the ability to rebound from them.18. setback: 挫折；rebound: 反弹，回升，此处指重新振作。And there’s no single juncture, no one crossroads, on which everything hinges.19. 并不是只一个关键时刻、一处十字路口就可以决定一切。juncture: 特定时刻，特殊关头；hinge on: 依……而定，取决于。

So why do so many Americans—anxious parents, addled children—treat the period in late March and early April, when elite colleges deliver disappointing news to anywhere from 70 to 95 percent of their applicants, as if it’s precisely that?20. 那么为什么那么多美国人，包括焦虑的家长和迷茫的孩子，会把三月末四月初这段时间当做决定一切的关键时刻呢？而在这段时间里，名校给70%到95%申请者的都是坏消息。addled: 头脑混乱的。

For too many parents and their children, acceptance by an elite institution isn’t just another challenge, just another goal.A yes or no from Amherst or the University of Virginia or the University of Chicago is seen as the conclusive measure of a young person’s worth, an incontestable harbinger of the accomplishments or disappointments to come.21. Amherst: 艾姆赫斯特学院，昵称安城学院，是美国知名的文理学院之一；University of Virginia:弗吉尼亚大学，简称UVa，是一所享有盛誉的世界一流研究型大学；University of Chicago: 芝加哥大学，享誉全球的世界顶尖高等学府，共有89位获得诺贝尔奖得主在此工作或学习，为世界之最；conclusive: 决定性的；incontestable: 无可争辩的；harbinger: 前兆。Winner or loser: This is when the judgment is made. This is the great,brutal culling.22. brutal: 残酷的；culling: 挑选。

What madness. And what nonsense.

For one thing, the admissions game is too flawed to be given so much credit.23. flawed: 有缺陷的；credit: 信任。For another, the nature of a student’s college experience—the work that he or she puts into it, the self-examination that’s undertaken, the resourcefulness that’s honed24. resourcefulness: 足智多谋，智慧；hone: 磨炼，训练。—matters more than the name of the institution attended.

I spoke with Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator,one of the best-known providers of first-step seed money for tech start-ups.25. Y Combinator: 美国一家著名风险投资公司及创业孵化器；seed money: 种子基金；start-up: 新兴企业。I asked him if any one school stood out in terms of students and graduates whose ideas took off26. take off: （想法、计划等）开始获得成功。. “Yes,” he responded, and I was sure of the name I’d hear next: Stanford.It’s his alma mater, though he left before he graduated, and it’s famous as a feeder of Silicon Valley success.27. alma mater: 母校；Silicon Valley: 硅谷，位于斯坦福大学旁，著名高新技术区。

But this is what he said: “The University of Waterloo28. The University of Waterloo: 滑铁卢大学，是一所著名的综合性公立大学，北美地区最优大学之一。.” It’s a public school in the Canadian province of Ontario, and as of last summer, it was the source of eight proud ventures that Y Combinator had helped along.29. Ontario:（加拿大）安大略省；venture: 投机活动。“To my chagrin,” Altman told me, “Stanford has not had a really great track record.”30. chagrin: 懊恼；track record: 业绩，成绩纪录。

College is a singular opportunity to rummage through and luxuriate in ideas, to realize how very large the world is and to contemplate your desired place in it.31. rummage through: 翻寻；luxuriate in: 沉浸于；contemplate: 沉思，思考。And that’s lost in the admissions mania, which sends the message that college is a sanctum to be breached—a border to be crossed—rather than a land to be inhabited and tilled for all that it’s worth.32. mania: 狂热；sanctum: 圣地；breach: 闯入，破坏；till: v. 耕耘。