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In the college-admissions wars, we parents are the true fights. We are pushing our kids to get good grades, take SAT preparatory

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问题     In the college-admissions wars, we parents are the true fights. We are pushing our kids to get good grades, take SAT preparatory courses and build resumes so they can get into the college of our first choice. I’ve twice been to the wars, and as I survey the battlefield, something different is happening. We see our kids’ college background as a prize demonstrating how well we’ve raised them. But we can’t acknowledge that our obsession (痴迷) is more about us than them. So we’ve contrived various justifications that turn out to be half-truths, prejudices or myths. It actually doesn’t matter much whether Aaron and Nicole go to Stanford.
    We have a full-blown prestige panic; we worry that there won’t be enough prizes to go around. Fearful parents urge their children to apply to more schools than ever. Underlying the hysteria (歇斯底里) is the belief that scarce elite degrees must be highly valuable. Their graduates must enjoy more success because they get a better education and develop better contacts. All that is plausible—and mostly wrong. We haven’t found any convincing evidence that selectivity or prestige matters. Selective schools don’t systematically employ better instructional approaches than less selective schools. On two measures—professors’ feedback and the number of essay exams—selective schools do slightly worse.
    By some studies, selective schools do enhance their graduates’ lifetime earnings. The gain is reckoned at 2-4％ for every 100-point increase in a school’s average SAT scores. But even this advantage is probably a statistical fluke (偶然).A well-known study examined students who got into highly selective schools and then went elsewhere. They earned just as much as graduates from higher-status schools.
    Kids count more than their colleges. Getting into Yale may signify intelligence, talent and ambition. But it’s not the only indicator and, paradoxically, its significance is declining. Old-boy networks are breaking down. Princeton economist Alan Krueger studied admissions to one top Ph.D. program. High scores on the GRE helped explain who got in; degrees of prestigious universities didn’t.
    So, parents, lighten up. The stakes have been vastly exaggerated up to a point; we can rationalize our pushiness. America is a competitive society; our kids need to adjust to that. But too much pushiness can be destructive. The very ambition we impose on our children may get some into Harvard but may also set them up for disappointment. One study found that other things being equal, graduates of highly selective schools experienced more job dissatisfaction. They may have been so conditioned to being on top that anything less disappoints.
Why do parents urge their children to apply to more schools than ever?
选项 A、They want to increase their children’s chances of entering a prestigious college.
B、They hope their children can enter a university that offers attractive scholarships.
C、Their children will have a wider choice of which college to go to.
D、Elite universities now enroll fewer students than they used to.
答案A
解析 细节题。根据题干中的urge their children to apply to more school than ever定位到原文第二段。该段第二句和第三句指出，忧心忡忡的家长督促他们的孩子申请比以往更多的学校。在这种歇斯底里的情绪背后，隐藏着这样一种信念：稀缺的精英学位肯定非常有价值。由此可见，家长督促孩子申请更多学校的原因在于他们希望孩子能够进入精英学校学习，从而获得精英学校的学位。四个选项中，A项表述与原文相符，故选A。
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