单选题 You're busy filling out the application form for a position you really need, let's assume you once actually completed a couple of years of college work or even that you completed your degree. Isn't it tempting to lie just a little, to claim on the form that your diploma represents a Harvard degree? Or that you finished an extra couple of years back at State University?
More and more people are turning to utter deception like this to land their job or to move ahead in their careers, for personnel officers, like most Americans, value degrees from famous schools. A job applicant may have a good education anyway, but he or she assumes that chances of being hired are better with a diploma from a well-known university. Registrars at most well-known colleges say they deal with deceitful claims like these at the rate of about one per week.
Personnel officers do check up on degrees listed on application forms, then. If it turns out that an applicant is lying, most colleges are reluctant to accuse the applicant directly. One Ivy League school calls them "impostors". Another refers to them as "special cases". One well-known West Coast school, in perhaps the most delicate phrase of all, says that these claims are made by "no such people".
To avoid complete lies, some job-seekers claim that they "attended" or "were associated with" a college or university. After carefully checking, a personnel officer may discover that "attending" means being dismissed after one semester. It may be that "being associated with" a college means that the job-seeker visited his younger brother for a football weekend. One school that keeps records of false claims says that the practice dates back at least to the turn of the century--that's when they began keeping records, anyhow.
If you don't want to lie or even stretch the truth, there are companies that will sell you a fake diploma. One company, with officers in New York and on the West Coast, will put your name on a diploma from any number of nonexistent colleges. The price begins at around twenty dollars for a diploma from "Smoot State University". The prices increase rapidly for a degree from the "University of Purdue". As there is no Smoot State and the real school in Indiana is properly called Purdue University, the prices seems rather high for one sheet of paper.

单选题 The main idea of this passage is that ______.
A. employers are checking more closely on applicants now
B. lying about college degrees has become a widespread problem
C. college degrees can now be purchased easily
D. employers are no longer interested in college degrees
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】就大学学位而言,撒谎已成为普遍问题。二、三、五段列举的现象是以说明这一点。A和C只是文中提到的单个事实,不能作为本文的中心思想。D在文中根本就没有提及。
单选题 According to the passage, "special cases" refers to cases where ______.
A. students attend a school only part-time
B. students purchase false degrees from commercial firms
C. students never attended a school they listed on their application
D. students attended a famous school
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】“特例”是指那些从未上过他们列在申请表上学校的学生。第三段指出:如果求职者撒谎,大多数大学不愿直接控告求职者。常春藤联合会中的一所学校称之为“冒名顶替者”,另一所学校称之为“特例”。选答案C是根据第三段前面两句。
单选题 We can infer from the passage that ______.
A. performance is a better judge of ability that a college degree needs
B. experience is the best teacher
C. past work histories influence personnel officers more than degrees do
D. degree from a famous school enables an applicant to gain advantage over others in job competition
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】名牌大学的学位能使求职者在求职竞争中胜过其他的求职者。第二段指出:像大多数美国人一样,人事官员重视名校的学位。求职者受过良好的教育,但是他或她认为拥有知名大学的文凭,受雇的机会更多。
单选题 This passage implies that ______.
A. buying a false degree is not moral
B. personnel officers only consider applicants from famous schools
C. most people lie on applications because they were dismissed from school
D. society should be greatly responsible for lying on applications
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】第二段指出:包括人事官员在内的许多美国人看重名校的学位。这实质上是美国的一种社会风气。因此,社会应当对申请表上的撒谎负有很大的责任。
单选题 As used in the first line of the second paragraph, the word "utter" means ______.
A. thorough B. fundamental C. ultimate D. decisive
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】第二段中的utter与thorough同义,意为“完全的”或“彻底的”。B(fundamental)的意思是“基本的”,C(ultimate)的意思是“最终的”、D(decisive)的意思是“决定性的”。这三个词的意思放到原句中均说不通,因此很容易排除。