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This week admissions officers at America’s most prestigious(有声望的，具盛名的) colleges are scrambling(争抢) to put the final touches on letters admitting the Class of 2019. Just as students from around the world are vying for(竞争;vying的动词原型是vie，vie with sb. for sth.) a limited number of spots in America’s best colleges higher-learning institutions are competing to attract the best and the brightest.
While laptops and tablets(笔记本电脑和平板电脑) have largely replaced paper-stuffed file folders in admissions office conference rooms the process is still based on the same underlying(潜在的) information used generations ago: high school grade-point averages SAT and ACT scores extracurriculars letters of recommendation(注意“推荐信”的复数形式，letter后边加s，recommendation后不加) and personal essays. But technology is poised to(作势，做好了准备) shake up the admissions game in a way that will level the playing field for students in America and abroad.
Massive open online courses(字面意思为“大量的网络公开课”，其实就是MOOC的全称) or MOOCs offered by dozens of elite(精英的，高层次的) colleges give students a chance to prove that they’re ready for a university — and in turn the institution gets an accurate measure(名词，评价) of whether a student is prepared for its academics helping refine(改进，和后边的imprecise相对应) what is quite an imprecise science. But this new way to assess(评估) applicants isn’t great for everyone. It could become harder for U.S. students with certain social and economic advantages — children of alumni(校友;在美国，只有本科就读于某校的人才算该校的alumni，只在一校度过研究生的不算alumni) and those who can afford the top high schools SAT prep classes and tutors — to get into elite colleges.
Right now there’s not much real knowledge of prospective students’ aptitude for advanced academic work. Instead colleges are stuck with imperfect proxies(衡量标准;指用以取代其他东西以进行衡量的东西): Grade-point averages are tricky to compare because grading standards vary(相异) widely among teachers and high schools. Personal essays could have been written by someone else. SAT scores are highly correlated(与……相关联) with parental income and students can learn strategies for maximizing their scores that have little to do with aptitude(天资) or achievement. Test scores aren’t incredibly indicative of collegiate(大学的) success anyway. For example economist Jesse Rothstein found that after controlling for students’ background characteristics SAT scores predict only 2.7 percent of the variation in students’ college grades.
Students are also in the dark. Traditionally college has been what economists call an “experience good” — something you can’t really understand until after the moment of purchase. This can result in(导致) bad matches: It’s just one reason that more than one in four students(四分之一的学生) who start college full-time drop out(退学) or transfer within three years.
Imperfect information also allows corruption(腐败) to flourish. Since it’s hard for a college to truly know which students will make the greatest contributions to the academic community who’s to say it’s not the children of wealthy donors or influential politicians? Just last month an investigation found that University of Texas President Bill Powers used “holistic(整体论的，考量全面的)” admissions criteria(标准) to admit the underqualified sons and daughters of various bigwigs(大亨) in the Lone Star State. Meanwhile well-off families pay thousands of dollars for SAT prep courses essay-writing coaches and slots in high schools with a pipeline(渠道) to the Ivy League.
This kind of behavior has become so common that many people have come to accept it as just another way the 1 percent get a leg up. But over the past three years the very same elite institutions populated with these advantaged students have launched(发起，实施) an online education movement that could someday leave the old admissions system in the dust(leave…in the dust =leave... far behind ). They’ve done something simple but profound: For the first time high school students can take real courses from the world’s greatest universities and demonstrate(证明) exactly how smart they are.
Through a nonprofit consortium called edX Harvard MIT the University of Texas the University of California at Berkeley Columbia Dartmouth Cornell Caltech the Sorbonne and dozens of other elite universities have begun offering complete online versions of their highly sought-after classes free to anyone with an Internet connection. Among other topics you can learn about computer science matrix algebra(矩阵代数) poetry and Chinese history from Harvard; engineering mathematics and jazz appreciation from UT; principles of economics(经济学原理) and data analysis(数据分析) from Caltech. Other online education platforms(在线教育平台) such as Coursera offer thousands of additional courses from elite universities free.
These are not watered-down classes. I took a genetics(遗传学) course through MITx the university’s branch(分支) of edX. It was the same class taught to freshmen in Cambridge Mass. — the same lectures homework assignments(家庭作业) midterms and final exam. MOOC success is much more likely to predict success in college classes than SAT scores because MOOC success is in fact success in college classes.
Online college courses also can be a better measure of student aptitude than Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes which are considered in admissions by many colleges. AP and IB standards aren’t as high as those in elite colleges’ courses. MIT for example doesn’t award credit for the AP biology chemistry or computer science exams — they’re simply not hard enough and don’t cover the same material as MIT’s classes in those subjects.
The availability of real free college courses means universities won’t have to rely on such flawed proxies in the future. Instead they’ll be able to pick and choose from among students who have already demonstrated that they can excel(突出) at demanding college work. Colleges are still figuring out exactly how to incorporate MOOCs into admissions since the courses have existed for only a few years. Right now students would list(列举) them among extracurricular activities(课外活动) which in a sense they are.
MIT long a leader in education technology has been one of the first universities to take steps in this direction. In 2012 a young man named Battushig Myanganbayar was one of only 340 students out of 150000 worldwide to earn a perfect score in a rigorous online Circuits and Electronics course. At the time he was 15 and living in Ulan Bator Mongolia(乌兰巴托，蒙古).
All Battushig needed was an Internet connection and a teacher with an eye for engineering potential. After excelling in the MIT class he took the SAT and he’s now enrolled at MIT. Another Circuits and Electronics student Amol Bhave from Jabalpur India enjoyed the class so much he created his own online follow-up course in signals and systems. He too was admitted into the 2013 MIT freshman class.
Just a few years ago none of this could have happened. As late as 2008 only about one in 10 Mongolian citizens used the Internet. But now broadband(宽带) access and cheap computing are spreading rapidly throughout the world bringing millions of Amols and Battushigs into contact with elite American institutions.
“Given that we know how rigorous(严格的) MITx classes are seeing a student’s performance in that class can help calibrate(衡量) us to their readiness for an MIT education” says Stuart Schmill the university’s dean of admissions. “This can be true for international students but also students in the U.S. who don’t otherwise have access to more challenging coursework.”
Science and engineering universities aren’t the only ones thinking this way. Davidson College a small highly selective(对学生精挑细选、择优录取的) liberal arts school in North Carolina also offers courses through edX. “One of the reasons Davidson partnered with edX was to enhance our reach in identifying more students that could thrive in a Davidson setting” says university President Carol Quillen a humanities scholar(人文学者). The university hasn’t enrolled any standout students from its online classes just yet.
As more colleges see edX and other online education platforms as valuable recruiting(招收新成员的) tools they will have strong incentives(刺激，鼓励) to make more of their courses available for free. Meanwhile Internet access will continue to expand. As a result the number of potential candidates for the best schools will increase exponentially — and the decades-long(长达几十年的) primacy(首要位置) of the SAT in college admissions will be challenged. It will become much harder for privileged(特权阶层的) parents to help their less-talented children game the system.
Unless of course elite schools really wanted the children of the rich and powerful all along(始终).
以上就是前程百利小编为大家带来的托福阅读材料，平时的阅读练习是托福考试阅读备考的重要一环。希望大家利用好每份材料，尽可能多地从中获取知识。预祝大家托福考试取得好成绩。
