Between the last application season and the current one, Swarthmore College, a school nationally renowned for its academic rigor

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问题     Between the last application season and the current one, Swarthmore College, a school nationally renowned for its academic rigor, changed the requirements for students competing for admission into its next freshman class. It made filling out the proper forms easier.
    Swarthmore is hardly alone in its desire to eliminate obstacles for a bounty of applicants. Over the last decade, many elite colleges have adjusted their applications in ways that remove disincentives and maximize the odds that the number of students contesting to get in remains robust—or, even better, grows larger.
    In one sense, that’s a commendably egalitarian approach and a sensible attempt to be sure that no qualified candidate is missed. But there’s often a less pure motive in play. In our increasingly status-oriented society, a school’s reputation is improved by a low acceptance rate, which can even influence how U.S. News & World Report ranks it. And unless a school is shrinking the size of its student body, the only way to bring its acceptance rate down is to get its number of applicants up. So, many colleges methodically generate interest only to frustrate it. They woo applicants for the purpose of turning them down.
    And there can be other justifications for what looks like a loosening of application demands. Smith College and several other similarly prominent colleges no longer require the SAT or ACT, and Kathleen McCartney, the president of Smith College, said that that’s not a bid for more applicants. It’s a recognition that top scores on those tests correlate with high family income and may say more about an applicant’s economic advantages—including, say, private SAT tutoring—than about academic potential.
    Jim Bock, Swarthmore’s dean of admissions, said that by lightening the essay load for its current applicants, the college was less concerned about boosting its overall number of applicants than about making sure candidates of great merit didn’t miss out on Swarthmore and vice versa. He mentioned the hypothetical example of a high school student from a low-income family who works 10 or more hours a week and doesn’t have ample time to do different essays for different schools.
    But will Swarthmore’s applicants this year give quite as much thought to its suitability for them, to whether it’s the right home? I’m betting not.
    When it’s a snap for a student to apply to yet one more college and each school is simply another desirable cereal on a top shelf that he or she is determined to reach, there’s inadequate thought to a tailored match, which is what the admissions process should strive for. It’s what the measure of success should be.
According to the author, the success of admissions process lies in

选项 A、recruiting as many genuine students as possible.
B、improving the school’s reputation nationwide.
C、making suitable match both for applicants and the school.
D、boosting overall number of applicants for the school.

答案C

解析 作者在末段提到,在现在的情况下,学生没有足够的思考时间,以便作出适合自己的配对,而这正是招生过程追求的目标,以及衡量成功与否的标准,C项所说的“为申请者和学校作出合适的配对”与文意相符。其他三项内容均一定程度上在文中提及,但都是作者不赞成的做法,都需排除。
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