阅读理解
Ask just about any high school senior or junior in America—or their parents—and they'll tell you that getting into a selective college is harder than it used to be. They're right about that. But the reasons for the newfound difficulty are not well understood.
Population growth plays a role, but the number of teenagers is not too much higher than it was 30 years ago, when the youngest baby boomers were still applying to college. And while many more Americans attend college than in the past, most of the growth has occurred at colleges with relatively few resources and high dropout rates, which bear little resemblance to the elites.
So what else is going on? One overlooked factor is that top colleges are admitting fewer American students than they did a generation ago. Colleges have globalized over that time, deliberately increasing the share of their student bodies that come from overseas and leaving fewer slots for applicants from the United States.
For American teenagers, it really is harder to get into Harvard— or Yale, Stanford, Brown, Boston College or many other elite colleges— than it was when today's 40-year-olds or 50-year-olds were applying. The number of spots filled by American students at Harvard, after adjusting for the size of the teenage population nationwide, has dropped 27 percent since 1994. At Yale and Dartmouth, the decline has been 24 percent. At Carleton, it's 22 percent. At Notre Dame and Princeton, it is 14 percent.
This globalization obviously brings some big benefits. It has exposed American students to perspectives that our proudly parochial country often does not provide in childhood.
Yet the way in which American colleges have globalized comes with costs, too. For one thing, the rise in foreign students has complicated the colleges' stated efforts to make their classes more economically diverse. Foreign students often receive insufficient financial aid and tend to be from well-off families. For another thing, the country's most selective colleges have effectively shrunk as far as American students are concerned, during the same span that many students and their parents are spending more time obsessing over getting into one.
Either way, the research emphasizes a problem with the way colleges have globalized. With only a handful of exceptions (including Harvard, Amherst, M.I.T. and Yale), colleges have not tried hard to recruit an economically diverse group of foreign students. The students instead have become a revenue source.
Population growth plays a role, but the number of teenagers is not too much higher than it was 30 years ago, when the youngest baby boomers were still applying to college. And while many more Americans attend college than in the past, most of the growth has occurred at colleges with relatively few resources and high dropout rates, which bear little resemblance to the elites.
So what else is going on? One overlooked factor is that top colleges are admitting fewer American students than they did a generation ago. Colleges have globalized over that time, deliberately increasing the share of their student bodies that come from overseas and leaving fewer slots for applicants from the United States.
For American teenagers, it really is harder to get into Harvard— or Yale, Stanford, Brown, Boston College or many other elite colleges— than it was when today's 40-year-olds or 50-year-olds were applying. The number of spots filled by American students at Harvard, after adjusting for the size of the teenage population nationwide, has dropped 27 percent since 1994. At Yale and Dartmouth, the decline has been 24 percent. At Carleton, it's 22 percent. At Notre Dame and Princeton, it is 14 percent.
This globalization obviously brings some big benefits. It has exposed American students to perspectives that our proudly parochial country often does not provide in childhood.
Yet the way in which American colleges have globalized comes with costs, too. For one thing, the rise in foreign students has complicated the colleges' stated efforts to make their classes more economically diverse. Foreign students often receive insufficient financial aid and tend to be from well-off families. For another thing, the country's most selective colleges have effectively shrunk as far as American students are concerned, during the same span that many students and their parents are spending more time obsessing over getting into one.
Either way, the research emphasizes a problem with the way colleges have globalized. With only a handful of exceptions (including Harvard, Amherst, M.I.T. and Yale), colleges have not tried hard to recruit an economically diverse group of foreign students. The students instead have become a revenue source.
单选题
1.It is suggested in Paragraph 2 that in America______.
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】细节题。根据题干关键词定位到第二段。由本段末句中的“然而人学率的增长大多出现在那些资源相对较少、辍学率相对较高的院校，这些院校和顶尖学府几无相似之处”可知，C项“和以前相比，更多的学生有机会进入普通大学”符合题意，为正确答案。
单选题
2.The word "slots" (Para. 3) is closest in meaning to______.
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】含义题。根据题干关键词定位到第三段第三句。由句中的increasing the share of以及后面的and leaving fewer可知，前后是并列关系，但表示相反的内容，故A项“配额”是share的同义改写，符合题意，为正确答案。
单选题
3.The percentages in Paragraph 4 are used to indicate that______.
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】推断题。根据题干关键词定位到第四段。首句指出“对美国青少年而言，申请进入……及其他许多名校，真的要比今天40多岁或50多岁的那代人申请进入这些大学时更困难”，接下来列举了各个名校在美国大幅下降的录取比例。结合第三段末句中的“它们刻意增加了海外生源的比例，给本国申请生留下的份额变少了”可知，在本国录取比例的下降意味着提高了海外学生的录取比例，故C项符合题意，为正确答案。
单选题
4.What can be learned from the last paragraph?
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】细节题。根据题干关键词定位到最后一段。由only a handful of exceptions(除了少数例外)及最后一句可知，D项符合题意，为正确答案，选项中的money-earning是对原文中revenue的同义改写。
单选题
5.The author's attitude toward American colleges' increasing overseas share is______.
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】态度题。本文主要围绕美国高校尤其是名校降低在本国录取比例，而提高海外学生录取比例这一主题进行阐述。文章既介绍了这么做的好处，如：让美国学生接触到了国际视野，同时也强调了提高留学生的录取比例带来的问题，如：留学生得到的经济援助甚少。因此，作者是以客观的态度在做评价，故D项符合题意，为正确答案。