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In the college-admissions wars, we parents are the true fighters. We are pushing our kids to get good grades, take SAT preparato

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问题     In the college-admissions wars, we parents are the true fighters. We are pushing our kids to get good grades, take SAT preparatory courses and build resumes so they can get into the college of our first choice. I’ve twice been to the wars, and as I survey the battlefield, something different is happening. We see our kids’ college background as a prize demonstrating how well we’ve raised them. But we can’t acknowledge that our obsession is more about us than them. So we’ ve contrived various justifications that turn out to be half-truths, prejudices or myths. It actually doesn ’t matter much whether Aaron and Nicole go to Stanford.
    We have a full-blown prestige panic; we worry that there won’t be enough prizes to go around. Fearful parents urge their children to apply to more schools than ever. Underlying the hysteria is the belief that scarce elite degrees must be highly valuable. Their graduates must enjoy more success because they get a better education and develop better contacts. All that is plausible,and mostly wrong. We haven’t found any convincing evidence that selectivity or prestige matters. Selective schools don’t systematically employ better instructional approaches than less selective schools. On two measures—professors’ feedback and the number of essay exams—selective schools do slightly worse.
    By some studies, selective schools do enhance their graduates’ lifetime earnings. The gain is reckoned at 2%~4% for every 100-point increase in a school’s average SAT scores. But even this advantage is probably a statistical fluke. A well-known study examined students who got into highly selective schools and then went elsewhere. They earned just as much as graduates from higher-status schools.
    Kids count more than their colleges. Getting into Yale may signify intelligence, talent and ambition. But it’s not the only indicator and, paradoxically, its significance is declining. The reason is that so many similar people go elsewhere. Getting into college is not life only competition. Old-boy networks are breaking down. Princeton economist Alan Krueger studied admissions to one top Ph.D. program. High scores on the GRE helped explain who got in; degrees of prestigious universities didn’t.
    So, parents, lighten up. The stakes have been vastly exaggerated. Up to a point, we can rationalize our pushiness. America is a competitive society; our kids need to adjust to that, but too much pushiness can be destructive. The very ambition we impose on our children may get some into Harvard but may also set them up for disappointment. One study found that, other things being equal, graduates of highly selective schools experienced more job dissatisfaction. They may have been so conditioned to being on top that anything less disappoints.
Why do parents urge their children to apply to more school than ever?
选项 A、They hope their children can enter a university that offers attractive scholarships.
B、They want to increase their children’ s chances of entering a prestigious college.
C、Their children will have a wider choice of which college to go to.
D、Elite universities now enroll fewer students than they used to.
答案B
解析 细节题。文中第二段提到，Underlying the hysteria is the belief that scarceelite degrees must be highly valuable，即家长让孩子申请更多的学校，是因为他们相信稀有的精英学历一定更有价值。申请更多的好学校，被录取的机会就会更多，故选B。其中C选项很有迷惑性，申请更多的学校，主要是为了孩子可以进更好的大学，而不仅仅是有更多的选择。
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