斯坦福大学给收到拒信的你的一封信

2017-10-20 作者： 1534阅读

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，招生办公室已经把录取结果通过邮件发送给了翘首以盼的申请者们。

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.

即使我已经从事招生工作长达30年之久，在这个周末（就像每年的这个时候），我仍然会为那些没有收到offer的优秀的申请者们感到遗憾和惋惜。我也可以预见到，在接下来的一段时间，很多家长会因为孩子拥有优秀的班级排名、突出的SAT成绩和在课外活动中的显著成就，但是仍然被斯坦福大学所拒绝而感到心烦意乱。

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.

当然，斯坦福大学给予学生的教育资源是无与伦比的，但是根据我的经验，通常对于我们的录取结果最失望的是申请者的家长。我可以理解他们的感受：当我唯一的女儿等待大学申请结果的时候，我自己也非常的忐忑不安。然而鉴于现在的青少年在生活中已经承受了太多的压力，我希望可以给大家分享三个理念。

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，任何事情都是相对的。和其他高校一样，斯坦福大学每年的录取人数已经数年没有变化了，但是申请者的数量却每年都在激增。不管学校对申请者某方面素质的侧重和偏好的争论，每年都会有数以千计的申请者被斯坦福大学所拒绝，毫无疑问，大部分被拒的申请者已经满足了斯坦福大学的入学要求。举例来说，拥有4.0 GPA的申请者是录取人数的四到五倍。

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.

我希望可以有一个公式来解释谁被录取，谁被拒绝，但是录取结果的决定与其说是一门科学，不如说是一门艺术。每一个课堂都像是拥有自己独特作曲和声音的交响乐；我们希望录取的学生可以创造一个和谐的环境，这就意味着一些卓越的贝斯手不能获得入场的资格。而且，在我们招生委员会内部，也会对申请者产生不同的看法。事实上，世人不会因为一个人没有收到斯坦福大学或者其他高校的录取而否定他所做的努力和获得的成就。

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，期待更长远的未来。尽管现在媒体经常批判现在年轻人的浮躁，然而在我看来，大多数申请者都非常出色。并且，通常，这些被某些学校拒绝的学生也会收到其他同样优秀的学校的录取。从高中到大学的转变是一个纪念性的转折点，与这个转变所发生的舞台相比，更值得我们关注的是一个年轻人如何在一个新的舞台上继续自己的旅程。这是一个家长应该纪念孩子成功的时刻，也是家长应该庆祝未来四年孩子可以获得的成长的时刻。

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.

这就得出了我的最后一个理念：学生所得到的教育质量取决于他怎么利用它。毋庸置疑的是，有些学校可以提供给学生其他学生所不能提供的教育资源，但是所有的学校都给予了学生一定的机会去学习，去成长。

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.

这让我想起来一个1975年加州森尼维尔市的高中毕业生。他只申请了斯坦福大学和另外一所大学。被斯坦福大学拒绝后，他万分沮丧，但是不久之后，他就收到了加州大学伯克利分校的录取。

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，他在麻省理工大学攻读了博士学位，成为华盛顿卡内基研究所的研究员和霍普金斯大学的兼职教授。2003年，他加入了斯坦福大学医学院，并且在2006年获得了诺贝尔心理学/医学奖。与其他斯坦福大学的申请者相比，Andrew Fire 并不是最优秀的。无独有偶，John Etchemendy, 斯坦福大学的教务长和哲学教授，也曾经在申请斯坦福大学的本科生时被无情拒绝。每年都会有众多的申请者被斯坦福大学拒绝，但是这并不影响他们去努力获得更精彩的人生。

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.

一个斯坦福大学，亦或是藤校的学士学位，只是你简历底部的一行文字而已。我们应该铭记的是：无论你收到的录取结果是好的还是坏的，它只是你漫长人生旅途中的一小步而已。