2018.11.13纽约时报：哪4种学生最容易进哈佛？

Getting Into Harvard Is Hard. Here Are 4 Ways Applicants Get an Edge.

哪4种学生最容易进哈佛？

For three weeks in October, Harvard’s admissions system was on trial before an often standing-room-only crowd in a federal courtroom in Boston. Harvard was accused of discriminating against Asian-American applicants, but the university firmly denied this throughout the trial, which ended last week.

在10月份的三个星期里，哈佛大学的招生系统在波士顿联邦法庭接受审判，审判厅总是挤得水泄不通。哈佛大学被指控歧视亚裔申请人，但在上周结束的整个审判中，该校一直坚决否认这一点。

Through testimony and internal documents, the case provided an eye-opening look into the often guarded and opaque admissions process at Harvard. With some 40,000 applicants and about 1,600 available seats, Harvard argued, some students would inevitably be left out.

通过证词和内部文件，该案件让人大开眼界，了解哈佛大学那些经常保密且不透明的录取过程。哈佛大学认为，有大约4万名申请者，而入学名额只有1600个，一些学生将不可避免地被排除在外。

How admissions officers went about that sifting process seemed to some in the gallery like an exercise in cynicism, which perpetuated the established ruling class, and to others like a noble pursuit, which lifted “diamonds in the rough,” of all backgrounds, into the future elite. Here’s what we learned about who gets an admissions edge:

旁听席上的许多人认为，录取官员以一种玩世不恭的态度进行筛选过程，使得现有的统治阶级长期延续下去，也有人认为他们在追求一种崇高的行为，将各种背景中的“粗糙钻石”提升为未来的精英。以下是我们了解到的谁有入学优势：

‘A.L.D.C.’s

“A.L.D.C.”

Harvard gives advantages to recruited athletes (A’s); legacies (L’s), or the children of Harvard graduates; applicants on the dean’s or director’s interest list (D’s), which often include the children of very wealthy donors and prominent people, mostly white; and the children (C’s) of faculty and staff. ALDCs make up only about 5 percent of applicants but 30 percent of admitted students.

哈佛优先考虑的申请人包括其招募的运动员(A)、哈佛大学毕业生的子女(L)；院长或主任兴趣清单上的申请人，通常包括非常富有的捐赠者和知名人士的子女，大多是白人(D)；以及教职员工的子女（C）。ALDC申请人只占申请人的5%左右，但是占入学学生的30%。

While being an A.L.D.C. helps — their acceptance rate is about 45 percent, compared with 4.5 to 5 percent for the rest of the pool — it is no guarantee. (One of those rejected despite being a legacy was the judge in the federal case, Allison D. Burroughs. She went to Middlebury College instead.)

有ALDC身份的申请人的入学率约为45%，而其余学生的入学率为4.5%至5%——但拥有ALDC身份也不能保证入学。（这起联邦案件的法官艾莉森·D·巴勒斯[Allison D. Burroughs] 也是被拒绝的校友子女。她后来去了米德尔伯里学院[Middlebury College]。）

Harvard’s witnesses said it was important to preserve the legacy advantage because it encourages alumni to give their time, expertise and money to the university.

哈佛大学的证人表示，保留毕业生子女优势非常重要，因为它鼓励校友向母校投入时间、专业知识和资金。

Students from ‘sparse country’

来自“匮乏乡村”的学生

Every year, Harvard sends out thousands of recruitment letters inviting high school juniors to apply, based in part on their P.S.A.T. scores. Students who take Harvard up on the invitation are about twice as likely as other applicants to be admitted.

每年，哈佛都会发出数千份申请邀请信，邀请高中三年级学生申请该校，部分是基于他们的PSAT分数。哈佛邀请的学生入学率是其他入学申请者的两倍。

In “sparse country” — 20 largely rural states where relatively few apply to Harvard — the university drops the P.S.A.T. score cutoff for white students to qualify for an invitation. In 2013, white applicants with P.S.A.T. scores of 1310 were invited to apply from sparse country, compared with 1350 for white and Asian-American women and 1380 for white and Asian-American men outside of sparse country. Black, Hispanic, Native American or other minority students needed an 1100 or better to be invited to apply, regardless of location.

在“匮乏乡村”——20个以农村为主的州，申请哈佛大学的人相对较少——该校不以PSAT分数作为向白人学生发送邀请信的标准。 2013年，在匮乏乡村，白人申请人在PSAT考试中获得1310分便可获得申请，而“匮乏乡村”之外，白人和亚裔美国女性则需获得1350分，白人和亚裔美国男性则需要1380人。无论身处何地，黑人、西班牙裔、美国原住民或其他少数族裔学生都需要1100分或更高才能被邀请申请。

Effervescent (or reflective) applicants

活跃（或内向）申请人

Admissions officers are urged to look for applicants with “unusually appealing personal qualities,” which could include “effervescence, charity, maturity and strength of character.”

招生人员受到鼓励，录取具有“异常吸引人的个人品质”的申请人，其中包括“活跃、仁爱、成熟和个性优势”。

Outgoing students seemed to benefit most, according to court documents and testimony.

根据法庭文件和证词，外向的学生似乎受益最多。

But new guidelines issued days before the trial began last month caution officers that character traits “not always synonymous with extroversion” should be valued, and that applicants who seem to be “particularly reflective, insightful and/or dedicated” should receive high personal ratings as well.

但是该校在上个月审判开始前几天发布的新指南警告招生官员，应该重视“并不总是等同于外向性格”的性格特征，并且那些似乎“特别具有反思力、洞察力和（或）专注力”的申请人也应该获得较高个人评定。

At trial, Harvard did not dispute that Asian-American applicants received, on average, lower personal ratings than applicants of any other race or ethnicity. The plaintiffs said this was evidence of Harvard’s stereotyping of Asian-Americans as industrious but dull. Harvard said it was not the result of discrimination; rather, it was partly because of weaker support from high school teachers and guidance counselors.

在审判中，哈佛并未否认亚裔申请人收到的平均个人评定低于任何其他种族或族裔申请人。原告表示，这证明哈佛对亚裔美国人的刻板印象是勤劳而沉闷。哈佛说，这不是歧视的结果；相反，部分原因是高中教师和辅导员对这些申请人的支持较弱。

“We do not endorse, we abhor stereotypical comments,” the dean of the Harvard admissions office, William Fitzsimmons, testified.

“我们不认可这一点，我们厌恶陈规定型的评论，”哈佛大学招生办公室主任威廉·菲茨西蒙斯(William Fitzsimmons)作证说。

Those with a compelling life story, who have overcome obstacles

有令人信服的人生故事的人，克服了某些障碍的人

Court documents, including guidelines issued to admissions officers, repeatedly showed clear advantages given to poor students and those from disadvantaged circumstances. But stories of besting challenges of other kinds also gave applicants an edge.

法院文件，包括发给招生人员的指导方针，一再显示对贫困学生和弱势群体给予明显优势。但是，其他类型的最佳挑战故事也能给申请人带来优势。

In his application, Thang Diep, a Harvard senior who came from Vietnam as a child, talked about being bullied for his accented English, and how affirming it was when a Harvard professor was the first teacher to pronounce his name correctly.

在申请中，小时候从越南来到美国的哈佛大学大四学生叶胜（Thang Diep，音）谈到自己因为英语有口音被欺负，以及一位哈佛教授成了第一个正确念出他名字的老师时，他感到多受鼓舞。

Sarah Cole appeared in court to testify that as a black student from Kansas City, Mo., she had worked hard to get a scholarship to a prestigious private college-prep school, but suffered socially for it. She said white teachers told her she was not smart enough to excel, and customers at her job laughed at her for wearing a Stanford T-shirt. She graduated from Harvard College in 2016, and is now a public school teacher.

出庭作证的莎拉·科尔(Sarah Cole)是一名来自密苏里州堪萨斯城的黑人学生，她曾努力获得一所著名私立大学预科学校的奖学金，却因此在社交方面受到影响。她说，白人老师告诉她，她不够聪明，无法出类拔萃，在她工作的地方，客户因为她穿斯坦福大学的T恤而嘲笑她。她于2016年毕业于哈佛大学，现在是一名公立学校教师。

Mr. Fitzsimmons, the admissions dean, said that a candidate’s race was given weight only if it was reflective of life experience, such as “the fact that they had overcome and surmounted these kinds of obstacles.”

招生主任菲茨西蒙斯说，申请人的种族只在反映其人生经历时才会被考虑，比如“他们克服并解决了那些类型的困难”。

And Mr. Fitzsimmons, whose parents had run a gas station, spoke of how he had applied to Harvard, hoping to be the first person in his family to go to college. He got in.

菲茨西蒙斯的父母是一家加油站的老板，他说自己当初申请哈佛时，在申请信中写道，希望自己是家族中第一个上大学的人。他被录取了。