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. "
According to the author, how selective colleges pick up applicants?

选项 A、They prefer those who have taken more AP courses.
B、They will take various factors into account.
C、They are delighted to see applicants take any APs.
D、They focus more on family backgrounds than APs.

答案B

解析 推理判断题。第六段指出,选拔性高校申请者的学分成绩和其他课业表现都很强,因此,大学除了看这些因素以外,还要综合考查他们的课外选修情况、推荐情况、论文以及家庭背景。可见,这类大学的录取是要综合考虑多种因素的,故答案为B)。A)“它们喜欢那些选修学分更多的学生”,文章一直在强调的一个概念就是,在选拔性大学面前,并非学分修得越多,被录取的机会就越大,故排除;C)“它们乐于看到申请者选修任何学分”,这是对第五段最后一句的曲解,原文指的是普通高校,故排除;D)“相比学分,它们更重视家庭背景”,从第六段可以看出,学分是入围候选的先决条件,而家庭背景是其他综合因素中的一个,不会优先于学分,故排除。
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