2018年12月英语六级阅读段落信息匹配题练习（2）
六级干货》》 作文 |阅读 |翻译 |听力Higher Grades Challenge College Application Process
A) Josh Zalasky should be the kind of college applicant with little to
worry about. The high school senior is taking three Advanced Placement courses.
Outside the classroom, he，s involved in mock trial, two Jewish youth groups and
has a job with a restaurant chain. He，s a National Merit semifinalist and scored
in the top ? percent of all students who take the ACT.
B) But in the increasingly frenzied world of college admissions, even
Zalasky is nervous about his prospects. He doubts he#ll get into the University
of Wisconsin, a top choice. The reason: his grades. It$s not that they%re bad.
It&s that so many of his classmates are so good. Zalasky’s GPA is nearly an
A minus, and yet he ranks only about in the middle of his senior class of 543 at
Edina High School outside Minneapolis, Minnesota. That means he will have to
find other ways to stand out.
C) “It’s extremely difficult,” he said. “I spent all summer writing my
essay. We even hired a private tutor to make sure that essay was the best it can
be. But even with that, it’s like I*m just kind of leveling the playing field.”
Last year, he even considered transferring out of his highly competitive public
school, to some place where his grades would look better.
D) Some call the phenomenon that Zalasky’s fighting “grade
inflation”—implying the boost is undeserved. Others say students are truly
earning their better marks. Regardless, it’s a trend that’s been building for
years and may only be accelerating: many students are getting very good grades.
So many, in fact, it is getting harder and harder for colleges to use grades as
a measuring stick for applicants.
E) Extra credit for AP courses, parental lobbying and genuine hard work by
the most competitive students have combined to shatter any semblance of a Bell
curve, one in which A，s are reserved only for the very best. For example, of the
47,317 applications the University of California, Los Angeles, received for this
fall’s freshman class, nearly 23,000 had GPAs of 4.0 or above.
F) That’s also making it harder for the most selective colleges—who often
call grades the single most important factor in admissions—to join in a growing
movement to lessen the influence of standardized tests.
G) “We，re seeing 30, 40 valedictorians at a high school because they don，t
want to create these distinctions between students,” said Jess Lord, dean of
admission and financial aid at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. “ If we don’t
have enough information, there’s a chance we’ll become more heavily reliant on
test scores, and that’s a real negative to me.”
H) Standardized tests have endured a heap of bad publicity lately, with the
SAT raising anger about its expanded length and recent scoring problems. A
number of schools have stopped requiring test scores, to much fanfare.
I) But lost in the developments is the fact that none of the most selective
colleges have dropped the tests. In fact, a national survey shows overall
reliance on test scores is higher in admissions than it was a decade ago. “It’s
the only thing we have to evaluate students that will help us tell how they
compare to each other,” said Lee Stetson, dean of admissions at the University
of Pennsylvania.
J) Grade inflation is hard to measure, and experts，caution numbers are
often misleading because standards and scales vary so widely. Different
practices of “weighting” GPAs for AP work also play havoc. Still, the trend
seems to be showing itself in a variety of ways.
K) The average high school GPA increased from 2.68 to 2.94 between 1990 and
2000, according to a federal study. Almost 23 percent of college freshmen in
2005 reported their average grade in high school was an A or better, according
to a national survey by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute. In 1975, the
percentage was about half that.
L) GPAs reported by students on surveys when they take the SAT and ACT
exams have also risen—and faster than their scores on those tests. That suggests
their classroom grades aren’t rising just because students are getting smarter.
Not surprisingly, the test-owners say grade inflation shows why testing should
be kept: it gives all students an equal chance to shine.
M) The problems associated with grade inflation aren’t limited to elite
college applicants. More than 70 percent of schools and districts analyzed by an
education audit company called SchoolMatch had average GPAs significantly higher
than they should have been based on their standardized test scores—including the
school systems in Chicago, Illinois, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Denver, Colorado,
San Bernardino, California, and Columbus, Ohio. That raises concerns about
students graduating from those schools unprepared for college. “They get mixed
in with students from more rigorous schools and they just get blown away,” said
SchoolMatch CEO William Bainbridge.
N) In Georgia, high school grades rose after the state began awarding HOPE
scholarships to students with a 3.0 high school GPA. But the scholarship
requires students to keep a 3.0 GPA in college, too, and more than half who
received the HOPE in the fall of 1998 and entered the University of Georgia
system lost eligibility before earning 30 credits. Next year, Georgia is taking
a range of steps to tighten eligibility, including calculating GPA itself rather
than relying on schools, and no longer giving extra GPA weight to vaguely
labeled “honors” classes.
O) Among those who work with students gunning for the more selective
colleges, opinions differ as to why there seem to be so many straight-A
students. “I think there are more pressures now than there used to be, because
20 or 30 years ago kids with a B plus average got into some of the best colleges
in the country,” said William Shain, dean of admissions and financial aid at
Bowdoin College in Maine. “It didn，t matter if you had a 3.9 instead of a 3.95.
I don，t know if it matters now either, but people are more likely to think it
does.”
P) Lord, the Haverford dean, sees grade inflation as the outcome of an
irrational fear among students to show any slip up—in grades or discipline. In
fact, colleges like his are often more interested in students who have overcome
failure and challenge than robots who have never been anything less than
perfect. “There，s a protection and encouragement of self-esteem that I don’t
agree with, but I think it’s a lot of what’s going on here,” he said. “And the
college admissions process feeds into that.”
Q) Back in Minnesota, Edina may join a growing number of schools that no
longer officially rank students—a move that could help students like Zalasky,
who says he was told by Wisconsin his class rank makes him a longshot. “They
feel they’re being left behind or not getting into the schools that they’re
applying to because of a particular class rank,” says Edina counselor Bill
Hicks. “And there is some validity with respect to some certain schools that use
certain formulas.”
R) But the colleges most popular with Edina students already know how
strong the school is: students’ median verbal and math SAT scores are 1170 out
of 1600. Hicks isn’t willing to blame the concentration grades at the top on
spineless teachers, or on grade-grubbing by parents and students. Expectations
are high, and grades are based on student mastery of the material, not a curve.
Wherever teachers place the bar for an A, the students clear it.
S) “Everyone here is like, ‘ if I can get a 98 why would I get a 93? said
Lavanya Srinivasan, who was ranked third in her Edina class last year. Far from
being pushovers, she says, Edina teachers are tougher than those in a course she
took at Harvard last summer. Zalasky agrees the students work hard for their
high grades. “The mentality of this school is, if you’re not getting straight
A，s you’re not doing well,” he said. “There’s just so much pressure on us day in
and day out to get straight A’s that everybody does.” Hicks compares the
atmosphere at Edina to the World Series expectations that always surround the
superstar lineup of the New York Yankees. “If they don’t win it,” he said, “then
it’s failure.”
1. Nearly half of the applications that the University of California
received this autumn had GPAs of 4.0 or above.
2. It，s also harder for the most selective colleges to lessen the effect of
standardized tests.
3. More than 30 years ago, about 11.5 percent of college freshmen reported
their average grade in high school was an A or better.
4. Because of the negative effects of standardized tests recently, a lot of
universities have no longer required test scores.
5. Some think Zalasky’s improvement unworthy, while others think his high
grades win the praise for him.
6. Because many of his classmates are so outstanding, Zalasky is nervous
about his college application.
7. Some colleges would like to admit students who have conquered failure
and challenge rather than those who have never been anything less than
perfect.
8. In the next year, Georgia is taking a series of measures to tighten
qualification, including calculating GPA itself and avoiding paying too much
attention to vaguely labeled “honors” classes.
9. In Zalasky，s opinion, students are put under great pressure to work hard
to get straight A"s, or they will be regarded as losers.
10. More and more schools no longer officially rank students by grade,
which can help students like Zalasky.
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