什么是美国最好的大学？ What Is the Best College in

　　 什么是美国最好的大学？

　　 When I see preachy posts about college admissions -- SECRETS OF A COLLEGE ADMISSIONS OFFICER REVEALED! -- 13 COLLEGE ADMISSIONS SECRETS THEY DON‘T WANT YOU TO KNOW -- HOW TO GET ADMISSIONS OFFICERS TO SAY “YES” -- 6 SECRET TIPS TO GET INTO YOUR DREAM SCHOOL --

　　 I tend to feel vaguely angry, and yet here I am to offer another. Though, to be fair, this one is unlike those mentioned. It’s something else, and it‘s something important to me.

　　 当我看到讨论大学录取的啰嗦的海报们时—（他们通常写着）一个大学的招生官透漏了13个不为人所知的大学录取的内幕。--六个让招生官对你说“YES”，撬开你梦想学校大门的窍门。看到这些，我总是感到茫然的愤怒，但在这里我想提供另外一点。尽管坦白的说，这一点和那些经常被提到的窍门不同，却是对我至关重要的一点。

　　 It’s about the way we talk about colleges. It‘s about contrived hierarchies. It’s about distractions. It‘s aboutAMERICA’STOPCOLLEGESand WHY FORBES REMOVED FOUR SCHOOLS FROM ITS AMERICA‘S BEST COLLEGE RANKINGS. It’s about excellence.

　　 这是关于我们评判学校的方式，关于对院校人为的分类，以及对公众所造成的选校的干扰。这是有关福布斯评出的所谓美国顶尖大学和福布斯之所以会把四所大学从他的排名中删除的原因，实际上我们要讨论评判学校优秀的标准。

　　 Because we seem to have forgotten that excellence -- in schools, in people, in general -- isn‘t linear. Not in any capacity. Not for a second. These rankings pretend that excellence is quantifiable -- it’s not -- and that we all value the same things -- we don‘t. In its 2013 rankings, for example, Forbes values “Student Satisfaction” at 22.5 percent, “Post-Graduate Success” at 37.5 percent, “Student Debt” at 17.5 percent, “Graduation Rate” at 11.25 percent, and “Nationally Competitive Awards” at 11.25 percent. I, on the other hand, am not so sure.

　　 我们似乎忘了无论对于院校，个人或是普遍意义上的优秀，都不是线性的。也从来不能够被这样武断的量化。然而这些排名却假设了学校的表现是能够被量化的，并且人们所关注的都是学校同一个方面的表现。以福布斯2013年的排名为例，用这样的比例分配来评测院校，学生满意度—22.5%，研究生成功率—37.5%，学生贷款—17.5%，毕业率11.25%，国家奖励11.25%。然而，我不能确定，当我们用这些比重和各种因素（可能是非常主观的判断）综合制定出标准并评出一个年度大惊喜--福布斯前300院校名单的时候，是否反而使已经足够担忧的我们，学生和申请者们选择大学的过程变得复杂。我们通过对父母，祖父母，邻居，朋友循序渐进地灌输这些观点（如我们经常听到这样的话“那是个好学校”“她到底是怎么想的不选哪个学校而选了这个？”），而使原本就已经很困难的申请过程变得更艰难，干扰更多，更加政治化。我们总是在传播这些只关注排名的判断。

　　 When we contrive hierarchies -- BIG SURPRISES IN FORBES ’TOP 300 COLLEGES‘ LIST -- based on what other people decided were the appropriate weights of appropriate factors (which are largely subjective) we complicate things for us, the students, the applicants, the people who are already sufficiently anxious about everything else. We make a difficult process more difficult, more distracting, more political, by instilling mindless opinions in our parents and grandparents and neighbors and friends (“That’s a great school,” “Why in the world would she choose this school over that one ”). We breed judges that recognize little beyond the rankings.

　　 When we pretend that colleges don‘t exist individually, as intricate, self-contained entities, as different kinds of excellent, as places where people meet people and help people and collaborate with people and change people and become people, but as five vaguely quantitative factors, as “better” or “worse,” we are kidding ourselves. More, we’re crippling ourselves.

　　 We make the admissions process more painful than it needs to be. We‘re forcing order, as we tend to, to disguise the chaos. And this process is chaos. Don’t ignore it. Embrace it. When we cheat the process we cheat ourselves. We look past the schools that might be right for us (“I‘ve never even heard of that school”) while we can praise those that might be right only for the “methodology,” the science, of Forbes Magazine.

　　 当我们不把学校看做独立的，复杂的，自成一体的实体，认为学校没有不同表现形式的优秀，不把学校作为人们相识，相助，协作，改变，互相激励的地方，还是把大学归结为五个含糊的量化因素，由此来评价它是“更好”还是“更差”的时候，我们简直是在拿自己开玩笑，同时严重削弱了我们的判断力。是我们自己让录取过程变得不必要的痛苦。我们总是想用排名顺序来掩饰这其中的混乱，然而这个过程本身就是一场混乱。我们只能包容而决不能忽视这种混乱。我们在其中作弊，就是自欺欺人。我们将会错过本来也许是合适自己的学校（我从没听说过那个学校），不过我们当然可以单单称赞《福布斯》杂志提供的“方法”和其科学性。

　　 And this process isn’t science; it‘s visceral. It’s different for all o