多学生和家长在选择学校的过程中，总喜欢参考美国大学排名，而且大部分都是大学排名的铁粉，但是耶鲁大学招生官Jeffrey Brenzel 以独特的视角给出了值得思考的建议。下面出国留学网和你说说美国的大学排名真的靠谱吗？
A Few Thoughts From Jeffrey Brenzel, Dean of Admissions, 2005-2013
Every year, U.S. News & World Report, Money, and a few other national magazines publish college rankings. And every year, Yale is at or near the top of the lists. I am writing to say that there are many excellent reasons to apply to Yale, but Yale’s position in the rankings is not one of them.
每年U.S. News & World Report, Money等国家级杂志刊登大学排名，而且每年耶鲁大学都位列榜单前列。这里我想说，耶鲁大学有很多地方可以俘获学生的芳心，值得申请，但排名绝非其中之一。
Make no mistake: the publication of college rankings is a business enterprise that capitalizes on anxiety about college admissions. Ranking lists do not provide much useful information for making decisions about where you should apply. Their main flaw is obvious but worth stating: the more or less arbitrary factors that go into the ranking calculations often have little to do with what will be important to your educational experience.
不要搞错了：大学排名的公布只是企业试图利用学生和家长对大学申请的忧虑。排名榜单并不能为学生选择申请的学校提供太多有效的信息。他们的主要缺陷是显而易见的，但还是值得说明一下：统计排名时参考的多少有些主观的因素，通常和对影响你教育经历的重要因素并无太大关系。
I do not mean to vilify the magazines that create such lists. They merely respond to consumer demand. Rather, I would like to illustrate the hazards of relying on the rankings and to make a case for a more personal and holistic approach to deciding on your list of colleges.
我并非要诽谤制作这些排名列表的杂志。他们只是回应消费者的需求。相反，我只想说明依靠排名择校的危害，并给出如何从个人实际情况出发进行全面考虑来最终决定大学申请名单的建议。
To better understand the phenomenon of the rankings, it is important to look at three things: why they are so popular, what is wrong with them, and why they have a bad influence on college decision-making.
为了更好地了解排名现象，需重点关注三个问题：为什么它们如此受欢迎?它们哪里不好?以及为什么他们对大学的选择会造成不良影响?
What Drives Public Interest in Rankings?
什么激发了公众对排名的兴趣?
The college search process can be a formidable task of sifting through enormous amounts of information, and the stakes are high. Ranking systems have an immediate and obvious appeal: they seem to simplify making sense of complicated and confusing information.
We have also become accustomed to relying on rating systems as consumers. When buying a vacuum cleaner or a television set, we can turn to Consumer Reports, which employs testing labs, engineers, surveys, and independent experts. By these means, they are able to condense and filter a great deal of information. We’ve learned from experience that there are good reasons to trust their advice, and the college ranking lists depend on people making the assumption that they are providing a similarly useful service.
大学的搜索需要筛选大量信息，是一个非常艰巨的任务，而且利害攸关。排名体系有一种直接和明显的吸引力：它们似乎简化和弄明白了扑朔迷离的信息。
作为消费者我们也习惯于依靠评分系统。当购买吸尘器或电视机时，我们可以参考《消费者报告杂志》—杂志充分利用了检测实验室、工程师、调查问卷和独立专家。通过这些方式，他们能够汇总和筛选大量的信息。我们从经验中得知，有充分的理由相信他们的建议。大学排名就利用了人们错误的认为它们会提供简单有用的建议。
What’s Wrong with College Rankings?
大学排名究竟哪里不好?
A college, however, is not a vacuum cleaner. Choosing a school is a far more personal, subjective, and ultimately expensive decision. Yet despite the greater importance and complexity of selecting a college, college rankings systems all take a far less thorough and scientific approach than Consumer Reports does when testing vacuum cleaners.
然而，一所大学不是吸尘器。选择一所学校是极具个人感情色彩，主观性强，需要承担巨大代价的决定。然而，尽管选择大学更为重要和复杂，但大学排名体系与《消费者报告杂志》在测试吸尘器时所采用的方法相比，远远不够全面和科学。
Another problem with rankings is that they allow the dominant player – U.S. News and World Report, a magazine that has actually gone defunct and exists now only as a purveyor of rankings – to exert undue influence. A former Yale admissions officer, now working in college counseling at a high school, shared this story with me. Each year, she helps students who have just completed their junior year create a list of colleges that are a good fit with their interests, personalities, and achievements. Each summer, the students visit those schools with their families to get a first-hand look. When they return to high school in the fall, despite what they have seen on their visits and what they know about their prospects, many of the students have created new lists of their college preferences. These new lists always seem to correlate with the rankings in U.S. News. Students tend to discard excellent and appropriate colleges ranked lower in U.S. News and to add “stretch” schools that are unlikely to offer them admission. She tells me she had this experience with “truly depressing regularity.”
排名体系存在另一个问题是，U.S. News and World Report 独占鳌头，这本杂志实际已经不复存在的，现在似乎成了排名的承办商，但却具有不恰当的影响力。一名前耶鲁大学招生官，目前在高中从事大学申请辅导工作，与我分享了一个故事。每年，她根据学生的兴趣、个性和成就帮助11年级的学生选定大学申请名单。每年暑假的时候，学生们都会和家人们一起去参观学校，得到第一手信息。当他们在秋天回到高中时，尽管他们在访校中有所了解，知道自己的前景，但是许多学生已经拟好了新的偏好名单。这些新的名单似乎与U.S. News排名有很大关联。学生倾向于放弃比较优秀适合自己但在U.S. News排名较低的学校，并增加了一些不太可能被录取的“勉强类”学校。这个前耶鲁招生官告诉我，她已经习以为常了,但还是令人沮丧。
Why is That Bad?
为什么那么糟糕?
Rankings promote the notion that the college you attend signals something about your place in the world. The signal translates as something like this: “People will think better of me if I attend a more highly-ranked school.” Rankings encourage students (and parents) to internalize the myth that where you go to college defines your value and determines your future success in life.
大学排名向人们宣传的理念是：你就读的大学暗示着你在世界的地位。这种暗示翻译一下差不多是这个意思：“如果我上一个排名更靠前的学校，人们对我的评价会更高”。排名引导学生(和家长)去认同你去哪儿上学将定义你的价值和决定你未来的人生这种缪谈。
What is the reality? This country happens to have hundreds of outstanding undergraduate programs, each offering more opportunities than any student could possibly pursue over four years. It will be up to the student to make something out of those opportunities, and it will not be the school that makes something out of the student.
那么，现实是怎样的呢?我们国家恰好有上百个优秀的本科项目，每一个项目提供给学生的机会，远比任何学生在大学四年里实际可能利用的要多的多。利用这些机会去做出点什么，取决于学生，而不是大学去利用学生去实现什么。
Meanwhile, the formulas used to rank schools are based on factors that in themselves are often irrelevant to individual students. Their composite scores reflect alumni giving rates, student-to-teacher ratios, median SAT scores, persistence to graduation, admissions selectivity and other data that provide little information about specific program strengths, honors programs or the general way in which the school lifts and supports student aspirations. The simplicity and clarity that ranking systems seem to offer are not only misleading, but can also be harmful. Rankings tend to ignore the very criteria that may be most important to an applicant, such as specific academic offerings, intellectual and social climate, ease of access to faculty, international opportunities and placement rates for careers or for graduate and professional school.
同时，计算排名公式是基于大学自身而通常和单个学生毫无关联的一些因素。他们的综合得分显示出学校的校友捐赠率、师生比、SAT中位数、毕业率、申请难度和其他一些数据，这些数据提供的关于具体学校项目的优势、荣誉项目或是学校通常是如何帮助学生来实现梦想的信息少之又少。排名系统的简单和清晰度似乎不仅具有误导性，而且是有害的。排名往往忽视了对申请人而言可能最重要的标准，例如具体的课程设置、学术和社交氛围、同教授接触的机会、国际机遇、就业率和继续深造研究生和专业学校的比率等。
Rankings have also turned out to be bad for colleges. They encourage schools to expend resources on things that move their ranking positions rather than things that serve their students. They diminish the appeal of colleges that serve many students extremely well but do not fit the performance parameters that the rankings measure. At one lower-ranked college, for example, students without strong prior academic records may tend to make tremendous gains, while at a higher-ranked school, even better-prepared students may tend to underperform their potential. The ranking systems provide no way to find out which is which.
排名也给大学带来了一些不好的影响。排名促使学校把资源用来提高排名地位而不是更好地为学生服务的事情上。他们削弱了一些为学生服务的特别好但是排名参照的各种参数不太占有优势的学校的吸引力。例如，在一所排名较低的大学，成绩不是特别优秀的学生也可能会获得巨大的收益，而在排名较高的学校，即便是条件很好的学生也有可能无法充分发挥自己的潜力。排名系统无法帮助学生分辨哪所学校更适合自己。
A Better Approach
更好的方法
Your high school academic record, teacher recommendations, extracurricular activities, test scores, and personal objectives will determine the range of colleges where you stand a good chance of admission. If your school has a good counseling office, you should certainly work with your college counselor to develop a reasonable sense of the different kinds of schools that lie within that range.
你的高中成绩、推荐信、课外活动、语言考试成绩和个人目标将决定你能录取的大学区间。如果你的学校有一个良好的升学咨询室，你一定要和升学指导老师在这个区间内一起努力找到真正适合自己的不同类型的学校。
Then simply keep in mind that the “ranking” differences among the schools within that group are likely to matter far less to your college experience than how you yourself decide to explore and engage the opportunities available at those schools. Look at different types of schools. Big schools and small schools. Schools focused on liberal arts and schools focused on technical programs. Schools known best for high academic standards and schools known best for their entrepreneurial spirit, outstanding extracurricular activities or social life. Schools with strong programs in your area of interest. Schools with interesting international opportunities. Decide which of these things is most important to you.
请记住，于你而言，你自己打算如何探索和利用学校的机会远比学校之间的“排名”差异重要。先看看不同类型的学校：大规模和小规模的学校;专注于文科和专注于理工项目的学校;以学术能力强著称的学校和重视创业精神并提供优秀的课外活动或丰富的社交生活的学校;在你感兴趣的领域有强势项目的学校;提供有趣的国际交流项目的学校。然后决定哪些对你而言是最重要的。
As you examine different types of institutions, your own feelings and thoughts are likely to change. Before zeroing in too quickly on what you think you want, give yourself time to absorb the ways in which colleges differ. Give yourself time to change your mind as you look at very different kinds of schools.
当你把院校类型纳入择校因素时，你自己的感觉和想法可能会发生改变。在你快速专注于你觉得你想要的学校前，给自己一定的时间理解各种高校之间的不同。当你考察不同类型的学校时，给自己时间去改变心意。
Perhaps you feel absolutely certain of the kind of school you want to attend, and you have a list of such places where you have a reasonable chance of admission. Even so, I urge you to apply to a couple of schools that do not fit the profile, but that you find interesting for one reason or another. Why? I have often seen students respond to a college very differently once they have been admitted in the spring than they did when visiting the prior summer. Students change in some important ways during their senior year in high school as they look outward to the rest of their lives, and they learn a great deal about colleges along the way. Give yourself the option in the spring of heading in a direction you did not anticipate in the fall.
也许你觉得非常明确想要去哪些学校，并且列出了能够有机会入读的学校清单。即使如此，我也希望你申请一些不符合你要求但是由于某种原因很吸引你的学校。为什么?因为我经常看到，学生在春季入学后，同夏季访校时，对学校有完全不一样的反应。随着同学们在高三的时候展望自己的余生，并且对大学的了解增多时，他们在择校上会发生很重要的改变。在春季给自己多一个选项：这个选项是你可能在秋季的时候去到一个完全没有预料到的方向。
Finally, once you have finished your applications, relax. You will very probably gain admission to some of your chosen colleges. You will probably have a few campuses to revisit as you make your final selection. You will also be prepared to attend college with the understanding that its rank does not correlate with what you are going to do there and how fulfilling the experience will be. What you accomplish in college – and in the years after – will instead be a function of how well you engage the incredible variety of opportunities and challenges that college presents.
最后，一旦你完成了所有申请，那么请放松一下。你很可能会获得目标院校的录取。你也可能需要再次访校，选择最终入读哪所大学。你必须明了，你即将入读的大学的排名与自己将要在那里做什么和这些体验是多么的充实是没有关联的。你在大学期间-甚至是毕业之后的人生里取得的成绩，是你如何利用各种绝佳的机会和资源以及如何应对大学给你的挑战的结果。