斯坦福大學(xué)給收到拒信的你的一封信

THIS AFTERNOON, my office sent email notifications to high school seniors who were waiting with anticipation to learn whether they would be invited to spend the next four years at Stanford.

今天下午，招生辦公室已經(jīng)把錄取結(jié)果通過郵件發(fā)送給了翹首以盼的申請者們。

Even though I have been in the admission field for over 30 years, I still feel quite a bit of pain at the end of this week (as I do each year) about the many exceptional youths who were not offered a space in the class. I also expect that in the following weeks I will hear from parents who are understandably distraught that their sons and daughters with top high school class rankings, very high SAT scores and some truly impressive extracurricular accomplishments were denied entry.

即使我已經(jīng)從事招生工作長達(dá)30年之久，在這個周末（就像每年的這個時候），我仍然會為那些沒有收到offer的優(yōu)秀的申請者們感到遺憾和惋惜。我也可以預(yù)見到，在接下來的一段時間，很多家長會因?yàn)楹⒆訐碛袃?yōu)秀的班級排名、突出的SAT成績和在課外活動中的顯著成就，但是仍然被斯坦福大學(xué)所拒絕而感到心煩意亂。

Clearly, I believe that a Stanford education is wonderful, but my experience suggests it's often parents who are more upset about our admission decisions than the kids. I can relate to their concerns: I found myself getting jittery as my own daughter waited for her college application decisions. But given that today's teens already have enough pressure in their lives, I wish to impart three credos to these parents.

當(dāng)然，斯坦福大學(xué)給予學(xué)生的教育資源是無與倫比的，但是根據(jù)我的經(jīng)驗(yàn)，通常對于我們的錄取結(jié)果最失望的是申請者的家長。我可以理解他們的感受：當(dāng)我唯一的女兒等待大學(xué)申請結(jié)果的時候，我自己也非常的忐忑不安。然而鑒于現(xiàn)在的青少年在生活中已經(jīng)承受了太多的壓力，我希望可以給大家分享三個理念。

First, it's all relative. While the number admitted into the undergraduate class has remained unchanged for years, Stanford, like many of its peer schools, has had a record number of total applicants. Regardless of arguments over whether too much preference is given to one category over another, thousands of students are going to be turned away, and there is no doubt that the vast majority of them could have met the demands of a Stanford education. We could, for instance, have filled incoming classes four or five times over with applicants who achieved grade point averages of 4.0 or greater.

首先，任何事情都是相對的。和其他高校一樣，斯坦福大學(xué)每年的錄取人數(shù)已經(jīng)數(shù)年沒有變化了，但是申請者的數(shù)量卻每年都在激增。不管學(xué)校對申請者某方面素質(zhì)的側(cè)重和偏好的爭論，每年都會有數(shù)以千計的申請者被斯坦福大學(xué)所拒絕，毫無疑問，大部分被拒的申請者已經(jīng)滿足了斯坦福大學(xué)的入學(xué)要求。舉例來說，擁有4.0 GPA的申請者是錄取人數(shù)的四到五倍。

I wish there were a formula to explain who is accepted and who isn't, but the decision making is as much art as it is science. Each class is a symphony with its own distinct composition and sound; the final roster is an effort to create harmony, and that means that some extraordinary bass players don't get a chair. What's more, even among my staff there are legitimate differences about applicants. The bottom line: The world is not going to judge anyone negatively because they didn't get into Stanford or one of our peer institutions.

我希望可以有一個公式來解釋誰被錄取，誰被拒絕，但是錄取結(jié)果的決定與其說是一門科學(xué)，不如說是一門藝術(shù)。每一個課堂都像是擁有自己獨(dú)特作曲和聲音的交響樂；我們希望錄取的學(xué)生可以創(chuàng)造一個和諧的環(huán)境，這就意味著一些卓越的貝斯手不能獲得入場的資格。而且，在我們招生委員會內(nèi)部，也會對申請者產(chǎn)生不同的看法。事實(shí)上，世人不會因?yàn)橐粋€人沒有收到斯坦福大學(xué)或者其他高校的錄取而否定他所做的努力和獲得的成就。

Second, celebrate the bigger picture. Despite the constant media buzz about the turbulent state of youth today, most of the applications I reviewed – as well as those reviewed by my colleagues at Stanford and elsewhere – are truly remarkable. And in most cases, those denied admission to some schools are admitted to others. The transition from high school to college is a monumental turning point, and it's more important to focus on how a young adult is moving on to a new stage than where that stage happens to be. This is the moment when parents should mark the success of their children and rejoice in the excitement that the next four years will bring.

其次，期待更長遠(yuǎn)的未來。盡管現(xiàn)在媒體經(jīng)常批判現(xiàn)在年輕人的浮躁，然而在我看來，大多數(shù)申請者都非常出色。并且，通常，這些被某些學(xué)校拒絕的學(xué)生也會收到其他同樣優(yōu)秀的學(xué)校的錄取。從高中到大學(xué)的轉(zhuǎn)變是一個紀(jì)念性的轉(zhuǎn)折點(diǎn)，與這個轉(zhuǎn)變所發(fā)生的舞臺相比，更值得我們關(guān)注的是一個年輕人如何在一個新的舞臺上繼續(xù)自己的旅程。這是一個家長應(yīng)該紀(jì)念孩子成功的時刻，也是家長應(yīng)該慶祝未來四年孩子可以獲得的成長的時刻。

And that leads to my final point: Education is what a student makes of it. Of course, certain schools have resources that others don't, but they all offer opportunities to learn and to grow.

這就得出了我的最后一個理念：學(xué)生所得到的教育質(zhì)量取決于他怎么利用它。毋庸置疑的是，有些學(xué)校可以提供給學(xué)生其他學(xué)生所不能提供的教育資源，但是所有的學(xué)校都給予了學(xué)生一定的機(jī)會去學(xué)習(xí)，去成長。

I am reminded of a teenager graduating high school in Sunnyvale, Calif., in 1975, who applied to only Stanford and one other school. He was understandably disappointed when denied admission here, but he later excelled as an undergraduate at the distinguished university across San Francisco Bay, UC Berkeley.

這讓我想起來一個1975年加州森尼維爾市的高中畢業(yè)生。他只申請了斯坦福大學(xué)和另外一所大學(xué)。被斯坦福大學(xué)拒絕后，他萬分沮喪，但是不久之后，他就收到了加州大學(xué)伯克利分校的錄取。

He went on to earn a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and to become a research scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins. In 2003, he joined the Stanford University School of Medicine and was the co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2006. Andrew Fire is not atypical when it comes to Stanford applicants. Nor for that matter is John Etchemendy, Stanford's longest-serving provost and philosophy professor who also was denied admission as an undergraduate. Nor are any of the thousands of others who aren't accepted to Stanford and go on to have fulfilling lives.

之后，他在麻省理工大學(xué)攻讀了博士學(xué)位，成為華盛頓卡內(nèi)基研究所的研究員和霍普金斯大學(xué)的兼職教授。2003年，他加入了斯坦福大學(xué)醫(yī)學(xué)院，并且在2006年獲得了諾貝爾心理學(xué)/醫(yī)學(xué)獎。與其他斯坦福大學(xué)的申請者相比，Andrew Fire 并不是最優(yōu)秀的。無獨(dú)有偶，John Etchemendy, 斯坦福大學(xué)的教務(wù)長和哲學(xué)教授，也曾經(jīng)在申請斯坦福大學(xué)的本科生時被無情拒絕。每年都會有眾多的申請者被斯坦福大學(xué)拒絕，但是這并不影響他們?nèi)ヅΛ@得更精彩的人生。

An undergraduate degree from Stanford, or an Ivy League college, may well end up being only one line at the bottom of a resume. What parents and college applicants across the country need to remember is that the news they receive, whether good or bad, is but a single step on a much longer journey.

一個斯坦福大學(xué)，亦或是藤校的學(xué)士學(xué)位，只是你簡歷底部的一行文字而已。我們應(yīng)該銘記的是：無論你收到的錄取結(jié)果是好的還是壞的，它只是你漫長人生旅途中的一小步而已。