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

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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. "
The example of Fairfax County father is cited to show________.

选项 A、parents’ misunderstanding about APs
B、adverse impact brought about by APs
C、great learning pressure of students
D、common concern of academic circles

答案A

解析 推理判断题。第二段指出,那位费尔法克斯郡的父亲告诉作者,其女儿高中的权威人士建议他的女儿要拿到9到10个学分才能进弗吉尼亚大学,而第三段第一、二句中作者指出,学分虽然十分重要,但学生并不需要选修那么多。可见,家长对学分的理解存在误区,故答案为A)。B)“学分带来的负面影响”,作者在第四段中明确指出学分对美国高中教育的改善是起到积极作用的,故排除;C)“学生巨大的学业压力”,第三段第二句虽然提到选修9到10个学分可能会产生很大的压力,但文章讨论的重点一直都是围绕学分的,而不是学习压力。故排除;D)“学术界普遍关注的问题”,第三段最后一句指出,一些教育者也关注学生修多少学分这个问题,并未说是普遍关注,故排除。
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