斯坦福給被拒學(xué)生的信：什么東西真正影響你的一生？

下面分享一篇斯坦福招生官理查德·H·肖（Richard H. Shaw）寫給被拒絕的學(xué)生以及學(xué)生家長的郵件。希望能讓你明白：

無論是升學(xué)還是就業(yè)，

都能夠淡定從容地面對(duì)人生的各種得與失。

學(xué)歷永遠(yuǎn)都不是衡量一個(gè)人的唯一標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。

以下為信件內(nèi)容

在今天下午，我們的招生辦公室向3萬4千多名申請(qǐng)我們普通錄取的盼望著想在斯坦福度過自己四年大學(xué)生涯的高中學(xué)生發(fā)出了郵件。

THIS AFTERNOON, my office sent out over 34,000 email notifications to high school seniors who applied Regular Decision and were waiting with anticipation to learn whether they would be invited to spend the next four years at Stanford.

即使我已負(fù)責(zé)招生工作30年之久，在這個(gè)周末，我依然為那些沒能如愿拿到offer的年輕人而感到遺憾。同時(shí)，我也能預(yù)見到很多家長會(huì)因?yàn)樽约旱暮⒆佑兄謨?yōu)異的教育背景、很高的SAT（美國大學(xué)生入學(xué)資格考試）成績但最終被斯坦福拒絕而感到心煩意亂。

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.

我一直相信斯坦福的教育水平是無與倫比的。但我的經(jīng)驗(yàn)告訴我，當(dāng)這些孩子被斯坦福拒絕的時(shí)候，他們的家長往往更感到沮喪。我能體會(huì)到這些家長的感受。當(dāng)我的女兒在等待大學(xué)的錄取決定時(shí)，我也曾經(jīng)緊張和不安。鑒于孩子們已經(jīng)承受了太多的壓力，在這里，我想與你們分享三條理念。

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.

首先，一切都是相對(duì)的。雖然每年錄取的本科生人數(shù)已經(jīng)保持不變數(shù)年之久，斯坦福像其它同級(jí)別的學(xué)校一樣，每年會(huì)收到超過42,000份申請(qǐng)。暫且不管學(xué)校對(duì)某一學(xué)科的側(cè)重和傾向問題，每年都會(huì)有數(shù)千學(xué)生被無情拒絕。毫無疑問的是，這些被拒掉的學(xué)生中，絕大多數(shù)是符合斯坦福的申請(qǐng)要求的。實(shí)際上，有著GPA 4.0（平均績點(diǎn)，斯坦福大學(xué)認(rèn)定的績點(diǎn)滿分為5分）或以上的申請(qǐng)者數(shù)量是我們實(shí)際錄取人數(shù)的四到五倍。

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 – more than 42,000. 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.

我也希望有這么一個(gè)公式來解釋誰能夠被錄取，誰會(huì)被拒掉，但決定是否錄取一名學(xué)生是一門藝術(shù)，而并非科學(xué)。每一個(gè)課堂就像一個(gè)交響樂團(tuán)，需要其獨(dú)特的組合和聲音；我們的目的是營造一個(gè)和諧而多元的環(huán)境，這就意味著額外的貝斯手是沒必要的。另外，即便是在我的同事內(nèi)部，也對(duì)申請(qǐng)者持有不同的看法和意見。但我想告訴你們的是：世界不會(huì)因?yàn)槟惚凰固垢＞芙^了而否定你自己的價(jià)值和努力。

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.

其次，看得長遠(yuǎn)一些。即使現(xiàn)在的媒體稱年輕人是垮掉的一代，就我所審核的這些申請(qǐng)斯坦福的年輕人來看，他們無與倫比的出色。通常來說，這些被我們拒絕的學(xué)生最終會(huì)被其他同一級(jí)別的大學(xué)錄取。從高中升入大學(xué)，是人生的一個(gè)重要的里程碑。對(duì)于年輕人來說，如何完成這個(gè)轉(zhuǎn)變而從此走上人生新的階段要比在哪里完成重要得多。在這個(gè)時(shí)候，家長們需要注重自己孩子取得的成就以及享受大學(xué)四年中帶來的驚喜。

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.

這就要提到我要說的最后一點(diǎn)上了：教育成就人。不可否認(rèn)，不同的大學(xué)之間教育資源的差距是存在的，但他們都能給予學(xué)生學(xué)習(xí)和成長的資源和空間。

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 learnand to grow.

這讓我想起了1975年加州Sunnyvale一名高中畢業(yè)生。他申請(qǐng)了斯坦福和另外一所學(xué)校。當(dāng)他得知被斯坦福拒絕之后十分沮喪，但后來他卻被另一所名校加州大學(xué)伯克利錄取了。

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.

他后來在MIT完成了博士學(xué)位，隨后成了華盛頓卡內(nèi)基學(xué)院的研究員和約翰霍普金斯大學(xué)的教授。2003年，他加入了斯坦福的醫(yī)學(xué)院，并在2006 年獲得了諾貝爾獎(jiǎng)。

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在當(dāng)年申請(qǐng)斯坦福的學(xué)生中，并沒有什么過人之處?，F(xiàn)在的斯坦福哲學(xué)教授John Etchemendy當(dāng)初也沒能拿到斯坦福本科的offer。實(shí)際上，他們和所有被斯坦福拒絕過，但仍然取得了輝煌的人生成就的人一樣。

Andrew Fire is not atypical when it comes to Stanford applicants. Nor for that matter is John Etchemendy, the Stanford 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.

一個(gè)斯坦福的本科學(xué)位，亦或是任何一所常青藤盟校的本科學(xué)位，在漫長的歲月中只會(huì)成為你簡歷中最不起眼的一行字而已。所有正在申請(qǐng)大學(xué)的學(xué)生和家長應(yīng)該懂得的是：不論你是被錄取了還是拒絕了，進(jìn)入大學(xué)，相對(duì)于漫漫人生路來說，只是一個(gè)簡單的紀(jì)念碑。

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.