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斯坦福写给被拒学生：漫漫人生
路大学为何物
Stanford to rejected students: a long way to go
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斯坦福写给被拒学生：漫漫人生路大
学为何物
斯坦福写给被拒学生：漫漫人生路，大学为何物
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.
在今天下午，我们的招生办公室向 3 万 4 千多名申请我们常规录取的盼望
着想在斯坦福度过自己四年大学生涯的高中学生发出了邮件。
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.
即便我已经负责招生工作长达 30 年之久，在这个周末，我依然为那些没能
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如愿以偿拿到 offer 的年轻人而感到遗憾。同时，我也能预见到很多家长会因为
自己的孩子有着十分优异的教育背景，很高的 SAT 成绩但最终被斯坦福拒绝而
感到心烦意乱。
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.
我一直相信斯坦福的教育水平是无与伦比的。但我的经验告诉我，当这些孩
子被斯坦福拒绝的时候，他们家长会比他们更感到沮丧。我能体会到这些家长的
感受。当我的女儿在等待大学的录取决定时，我也曾经紧张和不安。现今的孩子
们已经承受了太多的压力，在这里，我想与所有家长分享三条理念
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 or greater.
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首先，一切都是相对的。虽然每年录取的本科生人数已经保持不变数年之久，
斯坦福像他同一级别的其他学校一样，每年会收到超过 420xx 份申请。先不管
录取时对申请人资质的侧重和倾向问题，每年都会有数千学生会被无情的拒绝掉。
毫无疑问的是，这些被拒掉的学生中，绝大多数是符合斯坦福的申请要求的。实
际上，有着 的申请者的数量是我们实际录取人数四到五倍。
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.
我也希望有这么一个公式来解释谁能够被录取，谁会被拒掉，但决定是否录
取一名学生是一门艺术，而并非科学。每一个课堂就像一个交响乐团，需要其独
特的组合和声音;我们的目的是营造一个和谐而多元的环境，这就意味着额外的
贝斯手是没必要的。另外，即便是在我的同事内部，我们也对申请者持有不同的
看法和意见。但我想告诉你们的是：世界不会因为你被斯坦福拒绝了而否定你自
己的价值和努力。
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
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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.
其次，看得长远一些。即使现在的媒体称现在的年轻人是垮掉的一代，就我
所审核的这些申请斯坦福的年轻人来看，他们是无与伦比的出色。通常来说，这
些被我们拒绝的学生最终会被其他同一级别的大学录取。从高中升入大学，是人
生的一个重要的里程碑。对于年轻人来说，如何完成这个转变而从此走上人生新
的阶段要比在哪里完成重要得多。在这个时候，家长们需要注重自己孩子取得的
成就以及享受他大学四年中带来的惊喜。
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.
这就要提到我要说的最后一点上了：教育成就人。不可否认，不同的大学之
间教育资源的差距是存在的，但他们都能给予学生学习和成长的资源和空间。
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.
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这让我想起了 1975 年加州 Sunnyvale 的一名高中毕业生。他申请了斯坦福
和另外一所学校。当他得知被斯坦福拒绝之后十分沮丧，但后来他却被另一所名
校，加州大学伯克利录取了。
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 20xx, he joined the
Stanford University School of Medicine and was the co?winner of the Nobel
Prize in physiology or medicine in 20xx.
他后来在 MIT 完成了他的博士学位，随后成为了华盛顿的卡内基学院的研
究员和约翰霍普金斯大学的教授。20xx 年，他加入了斯坦福的医学院，并在 20xx
年获得了诺贝尔奖。
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.
Andrew Fire 在当年申请斯坦福的学生中，并没有什么过人之处。现在的斯
坦福哲学教授 John Etchemendy 当初也没能拿到斯坦福本科的 offer。实际上，
他们和所有被斯坦福拒绝过，但仍然取得了辉煌的人生成就的人一样。
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
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receive, whether good or bad, is but a single step on a much longer journey.
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