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

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

admin2015-07-05  48
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 is the author’s main purpose in writing the passage?
选项 A、To accuse some educators of giving misleading advice.
B、To encourage students to take nine or 10 AP courses.
C、To reveal some inside information about college admission.
D、To suggest college applicants to take AP courses reasonably.
答案D
解析 主旨大意题。作者从开篇起就强调过多地选修学分对于申请选拔性大学是没有决定意义的，这和很多学生家长的理解是有出入的。接下来，文章用具体事例进行阐释，过多的学分对考取选拔性大学没有决定意义，而文章最后也引用一位业内专家的话再次对选修多少学分提出了合理的建议。可见，文章的写作意图是建议大学报考学生合理地选修学分，故答案为D)。A)“对某些教育者的误导意见提出批评”，文中第二段虽然提及某位教育者的误导意见，但并没有明确地进行批评，故排除；B)“鼓励学生选修9到10个学分”，作者在文中多次说这样做会压力过大，显然不建议这么做，故排除；C)“揭露一些大学录取的内部信息”，文章是客观地分析大学录取形势和学生家长的误区，并没有提及大学录取的内部信息，故排除。
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