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  3. Between the last application season and the current one, Swarthmore College, a school nationally renowned for its academic rigor

Between the last application season and the current one, Swarthmore College, a school nationally renowned for its academic rigor

admin2022-07-06  40
问题     Between the last application season and the current one, Swarthmore College, a school nationally renowned for its academic rigor, changed the requirements for students competing for admission into its next freshman class. It made filling out the proper forms easier.
    Swarthmore is hardly alone in its desire to eliminate obstacles for a bounty of applicants. Over the last decade, many elite colleges have adjusted their applications in ways that remove disincentives and maximize the odds that the number of students contesting to get in remains robust—or, even better, grows larger.
    In one sense, that’s a commendably egalitarian approach and a sensible attempt to be sure that no qualified candidate is missed. But there’s often a less pure motive in play. In our increasingly status-oriented society, a school’s reputation is improved by a low acceptance rate, which can even influence how U.S. News & World Report ranks it. And unless a school is shrinking the size of its student body, the only way to bring its acceptance rate down is to get its number of applicants up. So, many colleges methodically generate interest only to frustrate it. They woo applicants for the purpose of turning them down.
    And there can be other justifications for what looks like a loosening of application demands. Smith College and several other similarly prominent colleges no longer require the SAT or ACT, and Kathleen McCartney, the president of Smith College, said that that’s not a bid for more applicants. It’s a recognition that top scores on those tests correlate with high family income and may say more about an applicant’s economic advantages—including, say, private SAT tutoring—than about academic potential.
    Jim Bock, Swarthmore’s dean of admissions, said that by lightening the essay load for its current applicants, the college was less concerned about boosting its overall number of applicants than about making sure candidates of great merit didn’t miss out on Swarthmore and vice versa. He mentioned the hypothetical example of a high school student from a low-income family who works 10 or more hours a week and doesn’t have ample time to do different essays for different schools.
    But will Swarthmore’s applicants this year give quite as much thought to its suitability for them, to whether it’s the right home? I’m betting not.
    When it’s a snap for a student to apply to yet one more college and each school is simply another desirable cereal on a top shelf that he or she is determined to reach, there’s inadequate thought to a tailored match, which is what the admissions process should strive for. It’s what the measure of success should be.
In Paragraph 3, the author suggests that
选项 A、it is not sensible for colleges to adopt an egalitarian approach.
B、the role played by colleges is never pure in the status-oriented society.
C、colleges boost up number of applicants to improve their rankings.
D、colleges tend to downsize their enrollment to keep their reputation.
答案C
解析 作者在第二段分析了像斯沃斯莫尔学院那样简化申请流程的动机。第二句首先确立基调，指出“动机不是单纯的”，暗示高校简化申请流程，并不单单是为了提供平等的机会给考生。接着提出。学校如果保持低录取率，学校的名声就能提高。而保持低录取率几乎只能是通过增加申请人数来实现，故此推断，作者是在暗示高校增加申请人数是为了提高名声和排名。即C项。作者在首句就肯定了高校此举是egalitarian approach，是可取的(sensible)，A项与此相反。B项纯粹是拼凑了第二、三句几个原词，实际上“高校的角色”并非本文讨论的内容。D项中的downsize their enrollment“缩小招生规模”无中生有，排除D项。
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