Passage Two

Questions 57 to 61 are based on the following passage.

     In the college-admissions wars, we parents are the true fights. We are pushing our kids to get good grades, take SAT preparatory courses and build resumes so they can get into the college of our first choice. I’ve twice been to the wars, and as I survey the battlefield, something different is happening. We see our kids’ college background as e prize demonstrating how well we’ve raised them. But we can’t acknowledge that our obsession(癡迷) is more about us than them. So we’ve contrived various justifications that turn out to be half-truths, prejudices or myths. It actually doesn’t matter much whether Aaron and Nicole go to Stanford.

     We have a full-blown prestige panic; we worry that there won’t be enough prizes to go around. Fearful parents urge their children to apply to more schools than ever. Underlying the hysteria(歇斯底里) is the belief that scarce elite degrees must be highly valuable. Their graduates must enjoy more success because they get a better education and develop better contacts. All  that is plausible——and mostly wrong. We haven’t found any convincing evidence that selectivity or prestige matters. Selective schools don’t systematically employ better instructional approaches than less selective schools. On two measures——professors’ feedback and the number of essay exams——selective schools do slightly worse.

     By some studies, selective schools do enhance their graduates’ lifetime earnings. The gain is reckoned at 2-4% for every 100-poinnt increase in a school’s average SAT scores. But even this advantage is probably a statistical fluke(偶然). A well-known study examined students who got into highly selective schools and then went elsewhere. They earned just as much as graduates from higher-status schools.

 Kids count more than their colleges.Getting into yale may signify intellgence,talent and

Ambition. But it’s not the only indicator and,paradoxically,its significance is declining.The reason:so many similar people go elsewhere.Getting into college is not life only competiton.Old-boy networks are breaking down.princeton economist Alan Krueger studied admissions to one top Ph.D.program.High scores on the GRE helpd explain who got in;degrees of prestigious universities didn’t.

So,parents,lighten up.the stakes have been vastly exaggerated.up to a point,we can rationalize our pushiness.America is a competitive society;our kids need to adjust to that.but too much pushiness can be destructive.the very ambition we impose on our children may get some into Harvard but may also set them up for disappointment.one study found that,other things being equal,graduates of highly selective schools experienced more job dissatisfaction.They may have been so conditioned to deing on top that anything less disappoints.

注意 此部分試題請在答題卡2上作答。

57.Why dose the author say that parengs are the true fighters in the college-admissions wars?

      A.They have the final say in which university their children are to attend.

      B.They know best which universities are most suitable for their children.

      C.they have to carry out intensive surveys of colleges before children make an application.

      D.they care more about which college their children go to than the children themselves.

58.Why do parents urge their children to apply to more school than ever?

      A.they want to increase their children chances of entering a prestigious college.

      B.they hope their children can enter a university that offers attractive scholarships.

      C.Their children eill have have a wider choice of which college to go to.

      D.Elite universities now enroll fewer syudent than they used to.

59.What does the author mean by kids count more than their college(Line1,para.4?

      A.Continuing education is more important to a person success.

      B.A person happiness should be valued more than their education.

      C.Kids actual abilities are more importang than their college background.

      D.What kids learn at college cannot keep up with job market requirements.

60.What does Krueger study tell us?

      A.GETting into Ph.d.programs may be more competitive than getting into college.

      B.Degrees of prestigious universities do not guarantee entry to graduate programs.

      C.Graduates from prestigious universities do not care much about their GRE scores.

      D.Connections built in prestigious universities may be sustained long after graduation.

61.One possible result of pushing children into elite universities is that______

      A.they earb less than their peers from other institutions

      B.they turn out to be less competitive in the job market

      C.they experience more job dissatisfaction after graduation

      D.they overemphasize their qualifications in job application