美國斯坦福招生官給學生的一封信：什么東西真正影響我們的一生？

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2021年3月，我們的招生辦公室向3萬4千多名申請我們普通錄取的盼望著想在斯坦福度過自己四年大學生涯的高中學生發出了郵件。

即便我已經負責招生工作長達30年之久，在這個周末，我依然為那些沒能如愿以償拿到offer的年輕人而感到遺憾。

同時，我也能預見到很多家長會因為自己的孩子有著十分優異的教育背景，很高的SAT成績但最終被斯坦福拒絕而感到心煩意亂。

我一直相信斯坦福的教育水平是無與倫比的。但我的經驗告訴我，當這些孩子被斯坦福拒絕的時候，他們家長會比他們更感到沮喪。

我能體會到這些家長的感受。當我的女兒在等待大學的錄取決定時，我也曾經緊張和不安。現今的孩子們已經承受了太多的壓力，在這里，我想與所有家長分享三條理念。

首先，一切都是相對的

雖然每年錄取的本科生人數已經保持不變數年之久，斯坦福像他同一級別的其他學校一樣，每年會收到超過42,000份申請。

先不管錄取時對申請人資質的側重和傾向問題，每年都會有數千學生會被無情的拒絕掉。毫無疑問的是，這些被拒掉的學生中，絕大多數是符合斯坦福的申請要求的。實際上，有著GPA4.0的申請者的數量是我們實際錄取人數四到五倍。

我也希望有這么一個公式來解釋誰能夠被錄取，誰會被拒掉，但決定是否錄取一名學生是一門藝術，而并非科學。

每一個課堂就像一個交響樂團，需要其獨特的組合和聲音；我們的目的是營造一個和諧而多元的環境，這就意味著額外的貝斯手是沒必要的。

另外，即便是在我的同事內部，我們也對申請者持有不同的看法和意見。但我想告訴你們的是：世界不會因為你被斯坦福拒絕了而否定你自己的價值和努力。

其次，看得長遠一些

即使現在的媒體稱現在的年輕人是垮掉的一代，就我所審核的這些申請斯坦福的年輕人來看，他們是無與倫比的出色。通常來說，這些被我們拒絕的學生最終會被其他同一級別的大學錄取。從高中升入大學，是人生的一個重要的里程碑。對于年輕人來說，如何完成這個轉變而從此走上人生新的階段要比在哪里完成重要得多。在這個時候，家長們需要注重自己孩子取得的成就以及享受他大學四年中帶來的驚喜。

最后，教育成就人。

不可否認，不同的大學之間教育資源的差距是存在的，但他們都能給予學生學習和成長的資源和空間。

這讓我想起了1975年加州Sunnyvale的一名高中畢業生。他申請了斯坦福和另外一所學校。當他得知被斯坦福拒絕之后十分沮喪，但后來他卻被另一所名校，加州大學伯克利錄取了。

他后來在MIT完成了他的博士學位，隨后成為了華盛頓的卡內基學院的研究員和約翰霍普金斯大學的教授。2003年，他加入了斯坦福的醫學院，并在2006年獲得了諾貝爾獎。

Andrew Fire在當年申請斯坦福的學生中，并沒有什么過人之處。現在的斯坦福哲學教授John Etchemendy當初也沒能拿到斯坦福本科的offer。實際上，他們和所有被斯坦福拒絕過，但仍然取得了輝煌的人生成就的人一樣。

一個斯坦福的本科學位，亦或是任何一所常青藤盟校的本科學位，在漫長的歲月中只會成為你簡歷中的最不起眼的一行字而已。所有正在申請大學的學生和家長應該懂得的是，不論你是被錄取了還是拒絕了，進入大學，相對于漫漫人生路來說，只是一個簡單的紀念碑。

下面是這封信的英文原文：

THIS AFTERNOON, my office sent out over 34,000 email notifications to high school seniors who applied Regular Decision and were waiting with anticipation to learn whether they would be invited to spend the next four years at Stanford.

Even though I have been in the admission field for over 30 years, I still feel quite a bit of pain at the end of this week (as I do each year) about the many exceptional youths who were not offered a space in the class. I also expect that in the following weeks I will hear from parents who are understandably distraught that their sons and daughters with top high school class rankings, very high SAT scores and some truly impressive extracurricular accomplishments were denied entry.

Clearly, I believe that a Stanford education is wonderful, but my experience suggests it’s often parents who are more upset about our admission decisions than the kids. I can relate to their concerns: I found myself getting jittery as my own daughter waited for her college application decisions. But given that today’s teens already have enough pressure in their lives, I wish to impart three credos to these parents.

First, it’s all relative. While the number admitted into the undergraduate class has remained unchanged for years, Stanford, like many of its peer schools, has had a record number of total applicants – more than 42,000. Regardless of arguments over whether too much preference is given to one category over another, thousands of students are going to be turned away, and there is no doubt that the vast majority of them could have met the demands of a Stanford education. We could, for instance, have filled incoming classes four or five times over with applicants who achieved grade point averages of 4.0 or greater.

I wish there were a formula to explain who is accepted and who isn’t, but the decision-making is as much art as it is science. Each class is a symphony with its own distinct composition and sound; the final roster is an effort to create harmony, and that means that some extraordinary bass players don’t get a chair. What’s more, even among my staff there are legitimate differences about applicants. The bottom line: The world is not going to judge anyone negatively because they didn’t get into Stanford or one of our peer institutions.

Second, celebrate the bigger picture. Despite the constant media buzz about the turbulent state of youth today, most of the applications I reviewed – as well as those reviewed by my colleagues at Stanford and elsewhere – are truly remarkable. And in most cases, those denied admission to some schools are admitted to others. The transition from high school to college is a monumental turning point, and it’s more important to focus on how a young adult is moving on to a new stage than where that stage happens to be. This is the moment when parents should mark the success of their children and rejoice in the excitement that the next four years will bring.

And that leads to my final point: Education is what a student makes of it. Of course, certain schools have resources that others don’t, but they all offer opportunities to learnand to grow.

I am reminded of a teenager graduating high school in Sunnyvale, Calif., in 1975, who applied to only Stanford and one other school. He was understandably disappointed when denied admission here, but he later excelled as an undergraduate at the distinguished university across San Francisco Bay, UC Berkeley.

He went on to earn a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and to become a research scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins. In 2003, he joined the Stanford University School of Medicine and was the co‐winner of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2006.

Andrew Fire is not atypical when it comes to Stanford applicants. Nor for that matter is John Etchemendy, the Stanford provost and philosophy professor who also was denied admission as an undergraduate. Nor are any of the thousands of others who aren’t accepted to Stanford and go on to have fulfilling lives.

An undergraduate degree from Stanford, or an Ivy League college, may well end up being only one line at the bottom of a resume. What parents and college applicants across the country need to remember is that the news they receive, whether good or bad, is but a single step on a much longer journey.

本文發表于《洛杉磯時報》，原題“Rejected by Stanford? You'll live”。作者：Richard H. Shaw，斯坦福大學招生和助學辦主任。

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美國斯坦福招生官給學生的一封信：什么東西真正影響我們的一生？

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