莘莘學子們 被名校拒絕不可怕

HERE we go again. At Harvard, Emory, Bucknell and other schools around the country, there have been record numbers of applicants yearning for an elite degree. They’ll get word in the next few weeks. Most will be turned down.

這是老話題了。哈佛(Harvard)、埃默裏(Emory)、巴克內爾(Bucknell)和美國的其他學校，都迎來了人數創紀錄的渴望名校學位的申請者。這些人會在接下來的幾周內得到答覆。大多數都會被拒絕。

All should hear and heed the stories of Peter Hart and Jenna Leahy.

所有人都應該聆聽並留意彼得·哈特(Peter Hart)和詹娜·萊希(Jenna Leahy)的故事。

Peter didn’t try for the Ivy League. That wasn’t the kind of student he’d been at New Trier High School, in an affluent Chicago suburb. Most of its graduating seniors go on to higher education, and most know, from where they stand among their peers, what sort of college they can hope to attend. A friend of Peter’s was ranked near the summit of their class; she set her sights on Yale — and ended up there. Peter was ranked in the top third, and aimed for the University of Michigan or maybe the special undergraduate business school at the University of Illinois.

彼得沒有嘗試申請常春藤盟校(Ivy League)。他曾在芝加哥市郊一個富人區的新特里爾中學(New Trier High School)就讀，當時他可不算那種學生。該校大多數畢業班學生會繼續接受高等教育，而且大多數人都知道，以他們在同屆學生中所處的位置，可以寄望於哪種大學。彼得的一個朋友在班裏數一數二，她將眼光瞄準了耶魯(Yale)——後來被錄取了。彼得排在前三名，他瞄準了密歇根大學(University of Michigan)，或伊利諾伊大學(University of Illinois)的特設本科商學院。

Both rejected him.

兩所學校都拒絕了他。

He went to Indiana University instead. Right away he noticed a difference. At New Trier, a public school posh enough to pass for private, he’d always had a sense of himself as someone somewhat ordinary, at least in terms of his studies. At Indiana, though, the students in his freshman classes weren’t as showily gifted as the New Trier kids had been, and his self-image went through a transformation.

他最後上了印第安納大學(Indiana University)，而且立即就注意到了差別。新特里爾中學是一所公立學校，但它高端到足以和私立學校媲美的。在那裏，彼得總感覺自己就是個普普通通的人，至少在學業上是如此。但在印第安納大學，他班上的大一新生不像新特里爾的孩子們那麼才能出衆，他的自我形象經歷了一次轉變。

“I really felt like I was a competent person,” he told me last year, shortly after he’d turned 28. And he thrived. He got into an honors program for undergraduate business majors. He became vice president of a business fraternity on campus. He cobbled together the capital to start a tiny real estate enterprise that fixed up and rented small houses to fellow students.

“我真的覺得我有足夠的能力，”他在去年這麼對我說，彼時他剛滿28歲。他在大學裏大展拳腳，得以修讀本科商科專業的榮譽課程，擔任了學校商科兄弟會的副主席。他籌措了一些資金，創辦了一所小規模的房地產企業，修整小房子並向其他學生出租。

And he finagled a way, off campus, to interview with several of the top-drawer consulting firms that trawled for recruits at the Ivies but often bypassed schools like Indiana. Upon graduation, he took a plum job in the Chicago office of the Boston Consulting Group, where he recognized one of the other new hires: the friend from New Trier who’d gone to Yale. Traveling a more gilded path, she’d arrived at the same destination.

而且在校外，他用一種連蒙帶騙的方式去參加一些頂尖的諮詢公司的面試，這些公司在常春藤學校尋找新僱員，但是總是忽視像印第安納大學這樣的學校。畢業之後，他在波士頓諮詢公司(Boston Consulting Group)芝加哥辦公室找到了一份稱心的工作，在那裏認出了另外一個新員工：新特里爾中學那個後來上了耶魯的同學。她走了一條更光輝的道路，卻和彼得抵達了相同的目的地。

He later decided to get a master’s degree in business administration, and that’s where he is now, in graduate school — at Harvard.

他後來決定修讀工商管理碩士學位，而現在他就在哈佛研究生院就讀。

Jenna, 26, went through the college admissions process two years after he did. She, too, was applying from a charmed school: in her case, Phillips Exeter Academy. Her transcript was a mix of A’s and B’s, and she was active in so many Exeter organizations that when graduation rolled around, she received a prize given to a student who’d brought special distinction to the school.

26歲的詹娜經歷申請大學的過程比彼得晚了兩年。她同樣也就讀於一座罩着光環的高中：菲利普斯·埃克塞特學院(Phillips Exeter Academy)。她的成績單上只有A和B，而且活躍地參加學校的許多社團。她畢業時，還因爲給學校帶來了殊榮而得到了獎勵。

But her math SAT score was in the low 600s. Perhaps because of that, she was turned down for early decision at her first choice, Claremont McKenna College.

但是她SAT的數學成績只有略高於600分。也許正是因此，在申請最心儀的學校克萊蒙特麥肯納學院(Claremont McKenna College)的提前錄取時，她失敗了。

For the general admission period, she applied to more than half a dozen schools. Georgetown, Emory, the University of Virginia and Pomona College all turned her down, leaving her to choose among the University of South Carolina, Pitzer College and Scripps College, a sister school of Claremont McKenna’s in Southern California.

在常規錄取階段，她申請了至少六所學校。喬治城(Georgetown)、埃默裏、弗吉尼亞大學(University of Virginia)和波莫納學院(Pomona College)都拒絕了她，她只能在南卡羅來納大學(University of South Carolina)、匹茲學院(Pitzer College)和斯克利普斯學院（Scripps College，與南加州的克萊蒙特麥肯納學院是姊妹學校）之中選擇。

“I felt so worthless,” she recalled.

“我感覺自己很沒用，”她回憶道。

She chose Scripps. And once she got there and saw how contentedly she fit in, she had a life-changing realization: Not only was a crushing chapter of her life in the past, it hadn’t crushed her. Rejection was fleeting — and survivable.

她選擇了斯克利普斯學院。她到那裏後，心滿意足地適應了那裏的環境，然後得到了改變人生的領悟：這將她過去的生活全盤推翻，而且並沒有擊垮她。挫折感只是暫時的，可以挺過去。

As a result, she said, “I applied for things fearlessly.”

她說，她因此“無所畏懼地申請了許多東西”。

She won a stipend to live in Tijuana, Mexico, for a summer and work with indigent children there. She prevailed in a contest to attend a special conference at the Carter Center in Georgia and to meet Jimmy Carter.

她拿到津貼，在墨西哥的提華納住了一個夏天，和當地窮困的孩子一起工作。她贏得一個比賽，得以前去參加喬治亞州卡特中心(Carter Center)的專門會議，還見到了吉米·卡特(Jimmy Carter)。

And she applied for a coveted spot with Teach for America, which she got. Later she landed a grant to develop a new charter school for low-income families in Phoenix, where she now lives. It opened last August, with Jenna and a colleague at the helm.

詹娜在“美麗美國”(Teach for America)申請到了一個很多人夢寐以求的職位。之後她爭取到了一項撥款，爲菲尼克斯的低收入家庭創辦了一所新的特許學校。她現在就住在菲尼克斯。學校於去年8月開學，由詹娜和一個同事領導。

“I never would have had the strength, drive or fearlessness to take such a risk if I hadn’t been rejected so intensely before,” she told me. “There’s a beauty to that kind of rejection, because it allows you to find the strength within.”

“如果我之前沒有被慘烈地拒絕過，我絕不會有這種勇氣、動力和無畏，去承擔這種風險，”她告訴我。“被拒絕的挫折感有一種美，因爲它能讓你找到內心的力量。”

I don’t think Peter’s example is extraordinary: People bloom at various stages of life, and different individuals flourish in different climates. Nor is Jenna’s arc so unusual. For every person whose contentment comes from faithfully executing a predetermined script, there are at least 10 if not 100 who had to rearrange the pages and play a part they hadn’t expected to, in a theater they hadn’t envisioned. Besides, life is defined by setbacks, and success is determined by the ability to rebound from them. And there’s no single juncture, no one crossroads, on which everything hinges.

我並不覺得彼得是個特例：在人生當中，每個人盛放的階段都是不同的，不同的個體會在不同的環境下成功。詹娜的經歷也沒有多麼特別。一些人或許通過原原本本地遵循提前寫好的劇本，而獲得了滿足感。但卻有十倍甚至百倍的人不得不打亂安排，在從未料想到的劇場裏扮演自己從未料想到的角色。此外，挫折是生活的本義，經歷挫折後的反彈能力才決定了成功。從來沒有哪一個重要關頭或一個岔路口，能決定一切事情。

So why do so many Americans — anxious parents, addled children — treat the period in late March and early April, when elite colleges deliver disappointing news to anywhere from 70 to 95 percent of their applicants, as if it’s precisely that?

既然如此，爲什麼還有那麼多美國人——包括焦慮的父母和惶惑的孩子——偏偏將3月底到4月初這段時間，當成決定一切的關口，等待精英大學向70%乃至95%的申請者，發出令人失望的消息？

I’m describing the psychology of a minority of American families; a majority are focused on making sure that their kids simply attend a decent college — any decent college — and on finding a way to help them pay for it. Tuition has skyrocketed, forcing many students to think not in terms of dream schools but in terms of those that won’t leave them saddled with debt.

我形容的心理只存在於少數美國家庭；大部分家庭關注的是，確保他們的孩子進入一所像樣的學校，隨便哪所像樣的學校都行，同時想方設法幫他們付學費。學費大幅上漲，迫使學生們不能僅僅考慮理想的學校了，還要想想哪些學校不至於讓自己負債累累。

When I asked Alice Kleeman, the college adviser at Menlo-Atherton High School in the Bay Area of California, about the most significant changes in the admissions landscape over the last 20 years, she mentioned the fixation on getting into the most selective school possible only after noting that “more students are unable to attend their college of first choice because of money.”

愛麗絲·克里曼(Alice Kleeman)在位於加州灣區的門羅阿瑟頓高中(Menlo-Atherton High School)擔任大學錄取輔導老師。我向她問起，過去20年，大學錄取方面最重要的變化是什麼。她先是指出“越來越多的學生，因爲錢的問題無法進入首選學校”，之後才談到要儘可能地擠進對學生最挑剔的大學的那種固執。

But for too many parents and their children, acceptance by an elite institution isn’t just another challenge, just another goal. A yes or no from Amherst or the University of Virginia or the University of Chicago is seen as the conclusive measure of a young person’s worth, an uncontestable harbinger of the accomplishments or disappointments to come. Winner or loser: This is when the judgment is made. This is the great, brutal culling.

但對太多的父母和孩子來說，被名校錄取並不僅是下一個挑戰、下一個目標而已。來自安默斯特學院(Amherst)、弗吉尼亞大學或芝加哥大學(University of Chicago)的一個肯定或否定的答覆，會被當作對一個年輕人價值的決斷性評價，無可爭辯地預示了未來的成敗。你是贏家還是輸家？這就是決斷的時刻。這就是宏大、殘酷的優勝劣汰。

What madness. And what nonsense.

多麼瘋狂。但這只是一派胡言。

FOR one thing, the admissions game is too flawed to be given so much credit. For another, the nature of a student’s college experience — the work that he or she puts into it, the self-examination that’s undertaken, the resourcefulness that’s honed — matters more than the name of the institution attended. In fact students at institutions with less hallowed names sometimes demand more of those places and of themselves. Freed from a focus on the packaging of their education, they get to the meat of it.

首先，這場錄取遊戲漏洞太多，不值得如此被信任。其次，學生大學經歷的本質——付出的努力、經歷的自省、磨練出的處事能力——比就讀學校的名字更加重要。事實上，在名字不那麼光鮮的學校讀書的學生，有時對學校、對他們自身都有着更高要求。由於不再需要關注所受教育的包裝，他們可以直接奔向其中的“乾貨”。

In any case, there’s only so much living and learning that take place inside a lecture hall, a science lab or a dormitory. Education happens across a spectrum of settings and in infinite ways, and college has no monopoly on the ingredients for professional achievement or a life well lived.

不管怎樣，在教室、科學實驗室或宿舍裏，能得到的生活和學習經歷也就這麼多。教育發生在一系列不同的情境裏，而且有無窮多種方式。職業成就和美滿生活的配方，並非只有大學一項。

Midway through last year, I looked up the undergraduate alma maters of the chief executives of the top 10 corporations in the Fortune 500. These were the schools: the University of Arkansas; the University of Texas; the University of California, Davis; the University of Nebraska; Auburn; Texas A & M; the General Motors Institute (now called Kettering University); the University of Kansas; the University of Missouri, St. Louis; and Dartmouth College.

去年年中，我查閱了財富500強公司(Fortune 500)首席執行官的本科母校信息。這些是他們上的學校：阿肯色大學(University of Arkansas)、德克薩斯大學(University of Texas)、加州大學戴維斯分校(University of California, Davis)、內布拉斯加大學(University of Nebraska)、奧本大學(Auburn)、德克薩斯農工大學(Texas A & M)、通用汽車學院（General Motors Institute，現更名爲凱特林大學[Kettering University]）、堪薩斯大學(University of Kansas)、密蘇里大學聖路易斯分校(University of Missouri, St. Louis)和達特茅斯學院(Dartmouth College)。

I also spoke with Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, one of the best-known providers of first-step seed money for tech start-ups. I asked him if any one school stood out in terms of students and graduates whose ideas took off. “Yes,” he responded, and I was sure of the name I’d hear next: Stanford. It’s his alma mater, though he left before he graduated, and it’s famous as a feeder of Silicon Valley success.

我還和Y Combinator公司總裁薩姆·奧特曼(Sam Altman)交談過。Y Combinator是爲科技創業企業提供起步階段種子資金的最知名公司之一。我問他有沒有哪所學校的學生和畢業生，成功經營下去的創業設想最爲突出。他回答說，“有。”我對即將聽到的校名頗爲確定：斯坦福(Stanford)。這是他的母校（儘管他在畢業之前就離開了），而且斯坦福輸送的人才支撐了硅谷的成功。

But this is what he said: “The University of Waterloo.” It’s a public school in the Canadian province of Ontario, and as of last summer, it was the source of eight proud ventures that Y Combinator had helped along. “To my chagrin,” Altman told me, “Stanford has not had a really great track record.”

但他說出的卻是：“滑鐵盧大學(University of Waterloo)。”這是加拿大安大略省的一所公立學校。截至去年夏天，Y Combinator已經投資了八家由該校畢業生創立、並讓其引以爲豪的創業公司。“讓我懊惱的是，”奧特曼告訴我說，“斯坦福的成績並不是特別好。”

Yet there’s a frenzy to get into the Stanfords of the world, and it seems to grow ever crazier and more corrosive. It’s fed by many factors, including contemporary America’s exaltation of brands and an economic pessimism that has parents determined to find and give their kids any and every possible leg up.

儘管如此，人們仍然狂熱地想擠進世界各地的斯坦福，而且這種熱情顯得愈發瘋狂、愈發具有危害性。助長了這一趨勢的因素很多，包括當代美國社會對品牌的推崇，以及對於經濟的悲觀情緒，後者驅使父母們決心利用一切機會助孩子一臂之力。

And it yields some bitter fruits, among them a perversion of higher education’s purpose and potential. College is a singular opportunity to rummage through and luxuriate in ideas, to realize how very large the world is and to contemplate your desired place in it. And that’s lost in the admissions mania, which sends the message that college is a sanctum to be breached — a border to be crossed — rather than a land to be inhabited and tilled for all that it’s worth.

這帶來了一些惡果，包括對高等教育的目的和潛力的曲解。大學是一個絕無僅有的機遇，讓你盡情遨遊，沉浸於思想之海、認識世界之廣大，並思忖自己在這廣大世界中的理想位置。然而在關於錄取的狂熱中，人們錯失了這個機會。這場狂熱傳達了這樣的訊息：大學是一座用來闖入的聖殿、一個用來被跨越的界線，而非一片用來棲居、用來耕種，汲取其全部價值的土地。

LAST March, just as Matt Levin was about to start hearing from the schools to which he’d applied, his parents, Craig and Diana, handed him a letter. They didn’t care whether he read it right away, but they wanted him to know that it had been written before they found out how he fared. It was their response to the outsize yearning and dread that they saw in him and in so many of the college-bound kids at Cold Spring Harbor high school, in a Long Island suburb of New York City. It was their bid for some sanity.

去年3月，在馬特·萊文(Matt Levin)即將收到申請學校的通知前，他的父母克雷格(Craig)和戴安娜(Diana)給了他一封信。他們並不在意兒子是否馬上就看了這封信，他們只是想讓他知道，這封信是在他們得知兒子的申請結果之前寫下的。他們在兒子身上看到了極爲強烈的渴望和懼怕，在位於紐約郊區長島的冷泉港高中，其他即將升入大學的同學身上也有這種渴望和懼怕。這封信，就是他們對這種情緒的迴應，也是他們對理性的呼籲。

Matt, like many of his peers, was shooting for the Ivies: in his case, Yale, Princeton or Brown. He had laid the groundwork: high SAT scores; participation in sports and music; a special prize for junior-year students with the highest grade-point averages; membership in various honor societies; more than 100 hours of community service.

和許多同齡人一樣，馬特也想爭取常春藤：他的目標是耶魯、普林斯頓(Princeton)或布朗大學(Brown)。他已經打好了基礎：SAT高分；參與音樂體育活動；參加各類榮譽團體；逾100小時的社會服務；還榮獲了頒發給平均績點最高的高年級學生的特別獎項。

For Yale, Princeton and Brown, that wasn’t enough. All three turned him down.

然而，對於耶魯、普林斯頓和布朗來說，這些還不夠。三所大學都拒絕了他的申請。

His mother, Diana, told me that on the day he got that news, “He shut me out for the first time in 17 years. He barely looked at me. Said, ‘Don’t talk to me and don’t touch me.’ Then he disappeared to take a shower and literally drowned his sorrows for the next 45 minutes.”

在馬特得知被拒消息的那一天，他的媽媽戴安娜告訴我，“他17年來第一次對我不理不睬，幾乎不敢看我。擠出一句，‘別跟我說話，別碰我。’然後就溜去淋浴了，在接下來的45分鐘裏簡直就是在用衝下的水來澆熄自己的悲傷。”

The following morning, he rallied and left the house wearing a sweatshirt with the name of the school that had been his fourth choice and had accepted him: Lehigh University. By then he had read his parents’ letter, more than once. That they felt compelled to write it says as much about our society’s warped obsession with elite colleges as it does about the Levins’ warmth, wisdom and generosity. I share the following parts of it because the message in them is one that many kids in addition to their son need to listen to, especially now, with college acceptances and rejections on the way:

第二天早上，他恢復了精神，穿着一件印有錄取了他的第四志願學校——利哈伊大學(Lehigh University)——校名的運動衫出了門。那時，他已經看過了父母的信，而且看了不止一次。萊文夫婦所感到的非寫這封信不可的心情，既體現了他們的溫情、智慧和豁達，又折射出了我們的社會對名校扭曲的癡迷。我想與大家分享信的片段，因爲除他們的兒子以外，許許多多的孩子也需要聽一聽其中的信息，特別是現在，當大學錄取信和拒信紛至沓來之時。

Dear Matt,

親愛的馬特：

On the night before you receive your first college response, we wanted to let you know that we could not be any prouder of you than we are today. Whether or not you get accepted does not determine how proud we are of everything you have accomplished and the wonderful person you have become. That will not change based on what admissions officers decide about your future. We will celebrate with joy wherever you get accepted — and the happier you are with those responses, the happier we will be. But your worth as a person, a student and our son is not diminished or influenced in the least by what these colleges have decided.

在你收到第一所學校答覆的前一天晚上，我們想讓你知道，我們今天爲你感到無比驕傲。無論是否錄取，我們都爲你所取得的一切成就、還有你出色的爲人感到自豪。這一點，不會因爲錄取官對你的將來做了什麼決定而有任何改變。不管你被哪裏錄取，我們都會滿心歡喜地爲你慶祝——而且你對結果越是滿意，我們就越高興。你作爲個人、學生及我們兒子的價值，絲毫不會因爲這些學校的決定而受到削弱或影響。

If it does not go your way, you’ll take a different route to get where you want. There is not a single college in this country that would not be lucky to have you, and you are capable of succeeding at any of them.

即使未能如願，你也會另闢蹊徑，抵達你想去的地方。這個國家無論哪一所大學，擁有你都將是幸運的，你也有能力在任何一所學校裏取得成功。

We love you as deep as the ocean, as high as the sky, all the way around the world and back again — and to wherever you are headed.

我們對你的愛深似海洋，廣若天空，覆蓋全世界——並將追隨你到你要去的任何地方。

Mom and Dad

媽媽和爸爸