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.
Kathleen McCartney holds that the results of SAT or ACT

选项 A、are closely related to testees’ family income level.
B、should be considered an essential measure in recruitment.
C、reflect testees’ academic potential to a large extent.
D、play a dominant role in applying elite colleges.

答案A

解析 Kathleen McCartney的观点出现在第四段。该段末句提到了一种共识,即认为这类考试(指代SAT及ACT)的高分通常和高家庭收入有关,A项说“考试分数与参加者的家庭收入水平有关”与此相符。B项和D项将提到考试分数对名校录取的重要性,这与第四段第二句提到的许多名校都不再要求SAT或ACT的分数相矛盾。C项与文意相反,原文说的是,考试更能反映学生的家庭经济状况,而不是学术潜力。
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