本文由泰普林教授（Prof.Taplin）独立授权爱思英语发布，其他媒体如需转载，请与爱思网编辑部联系（editor@24en.com），未经许可，请勿转载

爱思英语网推出全新栏目《佳作欣赏》，旨在为各位网友提供互相、探讨、交流的平台。《佳作欣赏》主要设置以下子栏目：英文写作，英汉互译，方法，人生感悟。除英文写作以外，其余子栏目中英文皆可。如果您有好的作品，请向我们推荐。原创优先，转载作品请注明作者及出处。爱思，因你而精彩；爱思，大家的平台！ 学习学习

在线投稿：http://www.24en.com/custom/add.html

7.  Look beyond prestige

Prestige.   Now, let’s take a look at the 4 year colleges in another way, rankings.  Ask anyone for a ranking of some US universities and they will probably give one based on some idea of prestige.  The classical prestige groups in the US have been the Ivy League for men, (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale), the Seven Sisters for women, (Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe, BrynMawr and Barnard) with the frequent addition of, perhaps, Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA and Duke.  This is a list of opinion, based largely on history and old world ideas of social class.

What’s the value of a prestige name for a Chinese student?  It says, “I survived selectivity and got in to a well-recognized group.”  It might perhaps tip the scales when applying to a prestige professional school.  Also, someone in China might be awestruck and offer a job.  Many, many other schools are almost as strong, or even stronger, so undergraduate achievements and recommendations may count for as much or more.  Industry wants evidence of leadership, creativity and problem solving; graduate schools want evidence of research ability.  Professional schools want experience, maturity, leadership, responsibility. 

I like to point out that, in all the research on what makes people happy, nobody has ever found that graduates from prestige colleges lead happier lives.
 
Academic Power.  What about a more objective ranking?  Perhaps the most prominent objective ranking is the Shanghai Jiaotong/ARWU ranking of 500 world universities.   www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2011.html    That list provides a serious, widely respected measure of the raw academic power of the institution, that is, how much difference it makes in the world of scholarship and research.  Of the top 50 institutions, 34 are in the US.  Among the many lessons in the ARWU list:

How many not very well known names are near the top 
How many good places are at the lower ends of the list 
What good progress Chinese universities are making from year to year 

Instruction quality.  Next, let’s imagine, however that a beginning undergraduate enters a lecture hall at High ARWU university.  He sits with more than 1,000 other new students, straining to hear the famous professor.  Afterwards he goes to his study class to find that it is conducted by a foreign graduate student whom he has trouble understanding.  For him, high standing on the ARWU list helps little.  Isn’t it more important to get top quality instruction? 

That brings up a third way to rank, by ‘quality of undergraduate instruction.’  There is such a ranking at  http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges   The web site offers results by

National Universities, where we find several not-so-familiar names, and do not find some  classic ones,
 
National Liberal Arts Colleges, a collection of small gems of colleges, some famous and some unknown,
 
Regional universities.

A host of other rankings, many of uncertain quality, can also be found on the web, including most artistic, most athletic, most beautiful, best weather, best parties, campus safety, etc.  The can add helpful information about personal preferences.
 
In the final installment, we match the student into the system, bringing everything together.  

【词汇点津】

prestige[pres'tiʒ] 

n. 声望,威望,威信

例句：

Were Britain prepared to sacrifice some of its global influence and prestige , those choices would be easier.
如果英国已经准备好牺牲其全球影响力和声望，这些选择会更容易。

prominent['prɔminənt] 

a. 卓越的,显著的,突出的,突起的,凸出的

例句：

He is a prominent scholar in the field of linguistics.
他是语言学领域的杰出学者。

泰普林教授（Prof.Taplin）非常乐意与同学们进一步交流，为大伙儿解答相关的问题，欢迎与泰普林教授联系，邮箱地址   jrtaplin@verizon.net