Last year, I wrote a piece entitled " Why we wrongly freak out over AP?" Three to five Advanced Placement courses in high school

admin2016-09-09  23

问题     Last year, I wrote a piece entitled " Why we wrongly freak out over AP?" Three to five Advanced Placement courses in high school would satisfy most selective colleges, I said, "Taking six, seven, eight or 20 AP courses will almost never make you more attractive to those colleges that reject more students than they accept. "
    One Fairfax County father, though, told me his sophomore daughter wanted to go to the University of Virginia, but to do that, someone in authority at her high school said that she had to take about nine or 10 APs.
    According to the father, the adviser said " selective colleges want to see applicants take the most challenging courses at their high school, which means AP. " That is true, but it does not mean you have to take that many, unless you groove on stress. Many parents and students, and some educators, share the father’s concern.
    Introductory college courses such as AP, International Baccalaureate and the Advanced International Certificate of Education have done much to improve U. S. high schools in the past 30 years. They allow teachers to raise instruction, even for average students, to a level that prepares them for the rigors of college, as few high school courses do. Since the final exams in these programs are written and graded by independent experts, any attempt to dumb down an AP, IB or AICE course produces an embarrassing and revealing result: high grades from the teacher but failing marks on the exam, the results of which arrive after school is over.
    For most students applying to selective colleges from most high schools, taking three to five AP, IB or AICE courses are fine. If they come from a school with no or few such courses, admissions officers find other ways to gauge readiness. Students applying to the vast majority of schools will find those colleges delighted to see any APs.
    Selective colleges get far more applicants with strong APs and other signs of academic readiness than they have room to accept. From that group, they pick the ones with the deepest extracurriculars, warmest recommendations, best essays and most unusual family backgrounds.
    But in some very high-performing high schools in the Washington region, many students still will take more AP, IB and AICE courses than they need, often because it makes them feel more secure. Because selective colleges look closely at how applicants from the same school compare with each other, the Fairfax County father’s child needs to keep up with other U-Va. aspirants in her class. That does not mean she has to take nine or 10 APs.
    " Most admitted students from Fairfax County have not taken nine to 10 AP courses over their high school careers," U-Va. dean of admission Gregory Roberts told me. "That would be a very, very demanding course schedule for a high school student. "
    Shirley Bloomquist, a Great Falls-based educational consultant, has an encyclopedic grasp of U-Va. admissions. She said students accepted at U-Va. these days "will have generally taken seven or more AP courses in no particular order. "
What does the author think about introductory courses like AP?

选项 A、They are scientific and have positive impact on education.
B、They allow the average students to apply for colleges.
C、They will produce an embarrassing and revealing result.
D、Their results may arrive too late to be admission reference.

答案A

解析 推理判断题。定位句指出,诸如学分、国际文凭和国际高级教育证书这样的高校入门课程对改进美国高中起到了很大的作用,任何试图简化这类课程的做法都会产生不良的后果。可见,这些课程的设计是科学的,作用是积极的,故答案为A)。B)“它们允许中等学生申请大学”,原文是说这类课程促使教师提升授课难度,从而让中等生达到报考大学的水平,B)曲解了文意,故排除;C)“它们会产生一个令人尴尬而又深省的后果”,该句是对该段第三句的曲解,原文提到简化这类课程会产生一个令人尴尬而又深省的后果,故排除;D)“它们的结果对于作为录取参考来说太晚了”,从文中可以看出,这类课程的分数一直都是录取参考,故排除。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/CKG7777K
0

随机试题
最新回复(0)