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  3. When U. S. News started the college and university rankings 25 years ago, no one imagined that these lists would become what som

When U. S. News started the college and university rankings 25 years ago, no one imagined that these lists would become what som

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问题     When U. S. News started the college and university rankings 25 years ago, no one imagined that these lists would become what some consider to be the 800-pound gorilla of American higher education, important enough to be the subject of doctoral dissertations, academic papers and conferences, endless debate, and constant media coverage. What began with little fanfare" has spawned imitation college rankings in at least 21 countries or regions, including Canada, China, Britain, Germany, Poland, Russia, Spain, and Taiwan.
    Today, it’s hard to imagine there ever was a void of information to help people make direct comparisons between colleges, but such was the case in 1983 when we first ventured into the field. The editors back then, led by Marvin L. Stone, thought the project was worth attempting because a college education is one of the most important — and most costly — investments that people ever make. So the magazine designed a survey and sent it out to 1, 308 college presidents to get their opinions of which schools offered the best education. The winners: Stanford (National Universities) and Amherst (National Liberal Arts Colleges).
    That academic-reputation-only method was repeated in 1985 and 1987. In 1988, we started to use statistical data as part of the ranking methodology, evaluating those numbers along with the results of the survey. In 1997, in another pioneering step, the America’s Best Colleges rankings made the leap online at usnews. com. The online version, viewed by millions, has substantially more information and extended rankings than there is room for in the magazine.
    Of course, we’ve changed the ranking formula over the years to reflect changes in the world of higher education. In general, the biggest shift has been the move toward evaluating colleges less by the quality of the students they attract (inputs) and more by the success the school has in graduating those students (outputs). We operate under the guiding principle that the methodology should be altered only if the change will better help our readers compare schools as they’re making decisions about where to apply and enroll.
    Based on the success of the college rankings, we decided to expand the process to other levels of education. The America’s Best Graduate Schools rankings debuted in 1990 with annual listings of medical, engineering, law, business, and education schools.
    Our newest education ranking is America’s Best High Schools, first published in the fall of 2007. It identified the 100 best public schools out of more than 18,000 across the nation. Just as when we embarked on college rankings, setting up the process wasn’t easy, but it’s already proved to have enormous weight with our readers.
It can be inferred from the second paragraph that
选项 A、in 1983, there wasn’t any information to help people compare colleges directly.
B、the editors led by Marvin L. Stone doubted about the value of college rankings.
C、two universities out of 1, 308 across the nation won the prize of the best education.
D、the magazine designed a survey to identify the most important factor in college rankings.
答案A
解析 事实细节题。第二段首句谈到：“今天，很难想象曾经没有任何信息能帮助人们在大学之间直接作比较，但是在1983年…确实是这种情况。”由此看出，[A]是原文的同义转述，其中的there wasn’t any information对应原文的there was a void of information，void意为“空虚；空白”；故[A]为本题答案。从该段第二句可知，编辑们认为大学排名这一项目是值得的，因此他们不会怀疑大学排名的价值，排除[B]。该段最后两句谈到，该杂志对1，308名大学校长展开了调查，以获取他们认为哪所学校提供了最好的教育的观点，最后两所大学胜出。由此看出，1，308是大学校长的人数，故排除[C]；[D]所谈到的杂志展开调查的目的也与原文信息相悼，也排除。
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