HERE we go again. At Harvard, Emory, Bucknell and other schools around the country, there have been record numbers of applicants¹ yearning² for an elite³ degree. They’ll get word in the next few weeks. Most will be turned down.

这是老话题了。哈佛(Harvard)、埃默里(Emory)、巴克内尔(Bucknell)和美国的其他学校，都迎来了人数创纪录的渴望名校学位的申请者。这些人会在接下来的几周内得到答复。大多数都会被拒绝。

All should hear and heed⁴ the stories of Peter Hart and Jenna Leahy.

所有人都应该聆听并留意彼得·哈特(Peter Hart)和詹娜·莱希(Jenna Leahy)的故事。

Peter didn’t try for the Ivy⁵ League. That wasn’t the kind of student he’d been at New Trier High School, in an affluent⁶ 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.

彼得没有尝试申请常春藤盟校(Ivy League)。他曾在芝加哥市郊一个富人区的新特里尔中学(New Trier High School)就读，当时他可不算那种学生。该校大多数毕业班学生会继续接受高等教育，而且大多数人都知道，以他们在同届学生中所处的位置，可以寄望于哪种大学。彼得的一个朋友在班里数一数二，她将眼光瞄准了耶鲁(Yale)——后来被录取了。彼得排在前三名，他瞄准了密歇根大学(University of Michigan)，或伊利诺伊大学(University of Illinois)的特设本科商学院。

Both rejected him.

两所学校都拒绝了他。

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 freshman⁷ classes weren’t as showily gifted as the New Trier kids had been, and his self-image went through a transformation⁸.

他最后上了印第安纳大学(Indiana University)，而且立即就注意到了差别。新特里尔中学是一所公立学校，但它高端到足以和私立学校媲美的。在那里，彼得总感觉自己就是个普普通通的人，至少在学业上是如此。但在印第安纳大学，他班上的大一新生不像新特里尔的孩子们那么才能出众，他的自我形象经历了一次转变。

“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 vice⁹ president of a business fraternity on campus. He cobbled together the capital to start a tiny real estate enterprise that fixed¹⁰ up and rented small houses to fellow students.

“我真的觉得我有足够的能力，”他在去年这么对我说，彼时他刚满28岁。他在大学里大展拳脚，得以修读本科商科专业的荣誉课程，担任了学校商科兄弟会的副主席。他筹措了一些资金，创办了一所小规模的房地产企业，修整小房子并向其他学生出租。

And he finagled a way, off campus, to interview with several of the top-drawer consulting firms that trawled for recruits at the Ivies¹¹ 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 gilded¹² path, she’d arrived at the same destination.

而且在校外，他用一种连蒙带骗的方式去参加一些顶尖的咨询公司的面试，这些公司在常春藤学校寻找新雇员，但是总是忽视像印第安纳大学这样的学校。毕业之后，他在波士顿咨询公司(Boston Consulting Group)芝加哥办公室找到了一份称心的工作，在那里认出了另外一个新员工：新特里尔中学那个后来上了耶鲁的同学。她走了一条更光辉的道路，却和彼得抵达了相同的目的地。

He later decided¹³ to get a master’s degree in business administration, and that’s where he is now, in graduate school — at Harvard.

他后来决定修读工商管理硕士学位，而现在他就在哈佛研究生院就读。

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 transcript¹⁴ 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岁的詹娜经历申请大学的过程比彼得晚了两年。她同样也就读于一座罩着光环的高中：菲利普斯·埃克塞特学院(Phillips Exeter Academy)。她的成绩单上只有A和B，而且活跃地参加学校的许多社团。她毕业时，还因为给学校带来了殊荣而得到了奖励。

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的数学成绩只有略高于600分。也许正是因此，在申请最心仪的学校克莱蒙特麦肯纳学院(Claremont McKenna College)的提前录取时，她失败了。

For the general admission period, she applied¹⁵ 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.

在常规录取阶段，她申请了至少六所学校。乔治城(Georgetown)、埃默里、弗吉尼亚大学(University of Virginia)和波莫纳学院(Pomona College)都拒绝了她，她只能在南卡罗来纳大学(University of South Carolina)、匹兹学院(Pitzer College)和斯克利普斯学院（Scripps College，与南加州的克莱蒙特麦肯纳学院是姊妹学校）之中选择。

“I felt so worthless,” she recalled.

“我感觉自己很没用，”她回忆道。

She chose Scripps. And once she got there and saw how contentedly¹⁶ she fit in, she had a life-changing realization¹⁷: Not only was a crushing chapter of her life in the past, it hadn’t crushed her. Rejection¹⁸ was fleeting¹⁹ — and survivable.

她选择了斯克利普斯学院。她到那里后，心满意足地适应了那里的环境，然后得到了改变人生的领悟：这将她过去的生活全盘推翻，而且并没有击垮她。挫折感只是暂时的，可以挺过去。

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

她说，她因此“无所畏惧地申请了许多东西”。

She won a stipend²⁰ to live in Tijuana, Mexico, for a summer and work with indigent²¹ children there. She prevailed in a contest to attend a special conference at the Carter Center in Georgia and to meet Jimmy Carter.

她拿到津贴，在墨西哥的提华纳住了一个夏天，和当地穷困的孩子一起工作。她赢得一个比赛，得以前去参加乔治亚州卡特中心(Carter Center)的专门会议，还见到了吉米·卡特(Jimmy Carter)。

And she applied for a coveted²² spot with Teach for America, which she got. Later she landed a grant to develop a new charter school for low-income families in Phoenix²³, where she now lives. It opened last August, with Jenna and a colleague at the helm.

詹娜在“美丽美国”(Teach for America)申请到了一个很多人梦寐以求的职位。之后她争取到了一项拨款，为菲尼克斯的低收入家庭创办了一所新的特许学校。她现在就住在菲尼克斯。学校于去年8月开学，由詹娜和一个同事领导。

“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.”

“如果我之前没有被惨烈地拒绝过，我绝不会有这种勇气、动力和无畏，去承担这种风险，”她告诉我。“被拒绝的挫折感有一种美，因为它能让你找到内心的力量。”

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 determined²⁴ by the ability to rebound²⁵ from them. And there’s no single juncture²⁶, no one crossroads, on which everything hinges.

我并不觉得彼得是个特例：在人生当中，每个人盛放的阶段都是不同的，不同的个体会在不同的环境下成功。詹娜的经历也没有多么特别。一些人或许通过原原本本地遵循提前写好的剧本，而获得了满足感。但却有十倍甚至百倍的人不得不打乱安排，在从未料想到的剧场里扮演自己从未料想到的角色。此外，挫折是生活的本义，经历挫折后的反弹能力才决定了成功。从来没有哪一个重要关头或一个岔路口，能决定一切事情。

So why do so many Americans — anxious parents, addled²⁷ 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 precisely²⁸ that?

既然如此，为什么还有那么多美国人——包括焦虑的父母和惶惑的孩子——偏偏将3月底到4月初这段时间，当成决定一切的关口，等待精英大学向70%乃至95%的申请者，发出令人失望的消息？

I’m describing the psychology²⁹ 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于少数美国家庭；大部分家庭关注的是，确保他们的孩子进入一所像样的学校，随便哪所像样的学校都行，同时想方设法帮他们付学费。学费大幅上涨，迫使学生们不能仅仅考虑理想的学校了，还要想想哪些学校不至于让自己负债累累。

When I asked Alice Kleeman, the college adviser³⁰ 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.”

爱丽丝·克里曼(Alice Kleeman)在位于加州湾区的门罗阿瑟顿高中(Menlo-Atherton High School)担任大学录取辅导老师。我向她问起，过去20年，大学录取方面最重要的变化是什么。她先是指出“越来越多的学生，因为钱的问题无法进入首选学校”，之后才谈到要尽可能地挤进对学生最挑剔的大学的那种固执。

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 conclusive³¹ measure of a young person’s worth, an uncontestable harbinger of the accomplishments³² or disappointments to come. Winner or loser: This is when the judgment³³ is made. This is the great, brutal³⁴ culling³⁵.

但对太多的父母和孩子来说，被名校录取并不仅是下一个挑战、下一个目标而已。来自安默斯特学院(Amherst)、弗吉尼亚大学或芝加哥大学(University of Chicago)的一个肯定或否定的答复，会被当作对一个年轻人价值的决断性评价，无可争辩地预示了未来的成败。你是赢家还是输家？这就是决断的时刻。这就是宏大、残酷的优胜劣汰。

What madness. And what nonsense.

多么疯狂。但这只是一派胡言。

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，这场录取游戏漏洞太多，不值得如此被信任。其次，学生大学经历的本质——付出的努力、经历的自省、磨练出的处事能力——比就读学校的名字更加重要。事实上，在名字不那么光鲜的学校读书的学生，有时对学校、对他们自身都有着更高要求。由于不再需要关注所受教育的包装，他们可以直接奔向其中的“干货”。

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 spectrum³⁶ of settings and in infinite ways, and college has no monopoly on the ingredients for professional achievement or a life well lived.

不管怎样，在教室、科学实验室或宿舍里，能得到的生活和学习经历也就这么多。教育发生在一系列不同的情境里，而且有无穷多种方式。职业成就和美满生活的配方，并非只有大学一项。

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，我查阅了财富500强公司(Fortune 500)首席执行官的本科母校信息。这些是他们上的学校：阿肯色大学(University of Arkansas)、德克萨斯大学(University of Texas)、加州大学戴维斯分校(University of California, Davis)、内布拉斯加大学(University of Nebraska)、奥本大学(Auburn)、德克萨斯农工大学(Texas A & M)、通用汽车学院（General Motors Institute，现更名为凯特林大学[Kettering University]）、堪萨斯大学(University of Kansas)、密苏里大学圣路易斯分校(University of Missouri, St. Louis)和达特茅斯学院(Dartmouth College)。

I also spoke³⁷ 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 Silicon³⁸ Valley success.

我还和Y Combinator公司总裁萨姆·奥特曼(Sam Altman)交谈过。Y Combinator是为科技创业企业提供起步阶段种子资金的最知名公司之一。我问他有没有哪所学校的学生和毕业生，成功经营下去的创业设想最为突出。他回答说，“有。”我对即将听到的校名颇为确定：斯坦福(Stanford)。这是他的母校（尽管他在毕业之前就离开了），而且斯坦福输送的人才支撑了硅谷的成功。

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.”

但他说出的却是：“滑铁卢大学(University of Waterloo)。”这是加拿大安大略省的一所公立学校。截至去年夏天，Y Combinator已经投资了八家由该校毕业生创立、并让其引以为豪的创业公司。“让我懊恼的是，”奥特曼告诉我说，“斯坦福的成绩并不是特别好。”

Yet there’s a frenzy³⁹ to get into the Stanfords of the world, and it seems to grow ever crazier and more corrosive⁴⁰. It’s fed by many factors, including contemporary America’s exaltation of brands and an economic pessimism⁴¹ that has parents determined to find and give their kids any and every possible leg up.

尽管如此，人们仍然狂热地想挤进世界各地的斯坦福，而且这种热情显得愈发疯狂、愈发具有危害性。助长了这一趋势的因素很多，包括当代美国社会对品牌的推崇，以及对于经济的悲观情绪，后者驱使父母们决心利用一切机会助孩子一臂之力。

And it yields some bitter fruits, among them a perversion⁴² of higher education’s purpose and potential. College is a singular opportunity to rummage⁴³ through and luxuriate in ideas, to realize how very large the world is and to contemplate⁴⁴ your desired place in it. And that’s lost in the admissions mania⁴⁵, which sends the message that college is a sanctum to be breached⁴⁶ — a border to be crossed — rather than a land to be inhabited and tilled for all that it’s worth.

这带来了一些恶果，包括对高等教育的目的和潜力的曲解。大学是一个绝无仅有的机遇，让你尽情遨游，沉浸于思想之海、认识世界之广大，并思忖自己在这广大世界中的理想位置。然而在关于录取的狂热中，人们错失了这个机会。这场狂热传达了这样的讯息：大学是一座用来闯入的圣殿、一个用来被跨越的界线，而非一片用来栖居、用来耕种，汲取其全部价值的土地。

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 dread⁴⁷ 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 sanity⁴⁸.

去年3月，在马特·莱文(Matt Levin)即将收到申请学校的通知前，他的父母克雷格(Craig)和戴安娜(Diana)给了他一封信。他们并不在意儿子是否马上就看了这封信，他们只是想让他知道，这封信是在他们得知儿子的申请结果之前写下的。他们在儿子身上看到了极为强烈的渴望和惧怕，在位于纽约郊区长岛的冷泉港高中，其他即将升入大学的同学身上也有这种渴望和惧怕。这封信，就是他们对这种情绪的回应，也是他们对理性的呼吁。

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; participation⁴⁹ 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.

和许多同龄人一样，马特也想争取常春藤：他的目标是耶鲁、普林斯顿(Princeton)或布朗大学(Brown)。他已经打好了基础：SAT高分；参与音乐体育活动；参加各类荣誉团体；逾100小时的社会服务；还荣获了颁发给平均绩点最高的高年级学生的特别奖项。

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

然而，对于耶鲁、普林斯顿和布朗来说，这些还不够。三所大学都拒绝了他的申请。

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 literally⁵⁰ drowned his sorrows for the next 45 minutes.”

在马特得知被拒消息的那一天，他的妈妈戴安娜告诉我，“他17年来第一次对我不理不睬，几乎不敢看我。挤出一句，‘别跟我说话，别碰我。’然后就溜去淋浴了，在接下来的45分钟里简直就是在用冲下的水来浇熄自己的悲伤。”

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 warped⁵¹ obsession⁵² with elite colleges as it does about the Levins’ warmth, wisdom and generosity⁵³. 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 rejections⁵⁴ on the way:

第二天早上，他恢复了精神，穿着一件印有录取了他的第四志愿学校——利哈伊大学(Lehigh University)——校名的运动衫出了门。那时，他已经看过了父母的信，而且看了不止一次。莱文夫妇所感到的非写这封信不可的心情，既体现了他们的温情、智慧和豁达，又折射出了我们的社会对名校扭曲的痴迷。我想与大家分享信的片段，因为除他们的儿子以外，许许多多的孩子也需要听一听其中的信息，特别是现在，当大学录取信和拒信纷至沓来之时。

Dear Matt,

亲爱的马特：

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 accomplished⁵⁵ 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.

在你收到第一所学校答复的前一天晚上，我们想让你知道，我们今天为你感到无比骄傲。无论是否录取，我们都为你所取得的一切成就、还有你出色的为人感到自豪。这一点，不会因为录取官对你的将来做了什么决定而有任何改变。不管你被哪里录取，我们都会满心欢喜地为你庆祝——而且你对结果越是满意，我们就越高兴。你作为个人、学生及我们儿子的价值，丝毫不会因为这些学校的决定而受到削弱或影响。

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.

即使未能如愿，你也会另辟蹊径，抵达你想去的地方。这个国家无论哪一所大学，拥有你都将是幸运的，你也有能力在任何一所学校里取得成功。

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.

我们对你的爱深似海洋，广若天空，覆盖全世界——并将追随你到你要去的任何地方。

Mom and Dad

妈妈和爸爸