I applied to college one evening, after dinner, in the fall of my senior year in high school. College applicants in 1)Ontario, in those days, were given a single sheet of paper which listed all the universities in the province. It was my job to rank them in order of preference. Then I had to mail the sheet of paper to a central college admissions office. The whole process probably took ten minutes. My school sent in my grades separately. I 2)vaguely remember filling out a 3)supplementary two-page form listing my interests and activities. There were no 4)S.A.T. scores to worry about, because in Canada we didn’t have to take the S.A.T.s. I don’t know whether anyone wrote me a 5)recommendation. I certainly never asked anyone to. Why would I? It wasn’t as if I were applying to a private club.
I put the University of Toronto first on my list, the University of Western Ontario second, and Queen’s University third. I was 6)working off a set of brochures that I’d 7)sent away for. My parents’ 8)contribution 9)consisted of my father’s agreeing to drive me one afternoon to the University of Toronto campus. I walked around the campus. My father 10)poked his head into the admissions office, chatted with the admissions director, andÑI imagineÑeither said a few short words about the talents of his son or (knowing my father) remarked on the loveliness of the 11)delphiniums in the college flower beds. Then we had ice cream. I got in.
Am I a better or more successful person for having been accepted at the University of Toronto, as opposed to my second or third choice? It strikes me as a curious question. In Ontario, there wasn’t a strict 12)hierarchy of colleges. There were several good ones and several better ones and a number of programsÑlike computer science at the University of WaterlooÑthat were world-class. But since all colleges were part of the same public system and 13)tuition everywhere was the same, and a B average in high school pretty much guaranteed you a spot in college, there wasn’t a sense that anything great was 14)at stake in the choice of which college we attended. The issue was whether we attended college, andÑmost importantÑhow seriously we took the experience once we got there. I thought everyone felt this way. You can imagine my confusion, then, when I first met someone who had gone to Harvard.
There was, first of all, that strange initial reluctance to talk about the matter of college at allÑa glance down-ward, a shuffling of the feet, a 15)mumbled mention of 16)Cambridge. “Did you go to Harvard?” I would ask. I had just moved to the United States. I didn’t know the rules. An uncomfortable nod would follow. “Don’t define me by my school,” they seemed to be saying, which implied that their school actually could define them. And, of course, it did. Wherever there was one Harvard graduate, another 17)lurked not far behind, ready to recount the 18)intricacies of the college application essay, or wonder out loud about the 19)whereabouts of 20)Prince So-and-So. In the novels they were writing, the 21)precocious and sensitive 22)protagonist always went to Harvard; if he was troubled, he dropped out of Harvard; in the end, he returned to Harvard to complete his senior 23)thesis. Once, I attended a wedding of a Harvard 24)alum in his fifties, at which the best man spoke of his college days with the 25)groom as if neither could have accomplished anything of greater importance in the 26)intervening thirty years. By the end, I half expected him to take off his shirt and proudly display the large 27)crimson “H” 28)tattooed on his chest.
Social scientists 29)distinguish between what are known as treatment effects and selection effects. The 30)Marine Corps, for instance, is largely a treatment-effect institution. It doesn’t have an enormous admissions office grading applicants along for separate 31)dimensions of toughness and intelligence. It’s confident that the experience of undergoing Marine Corps basic training will turn you into a 32)formidable soldier. A modelling agency, by contrast, is a selection-effect institution. You don’t become beautiful by signing up with an agency. You get signed up by an agency because you’re beautiful.
At the heart of the American 33)obsession with the Ivy League is the belief that schools like Harvard provide the social and intellectual 34)equivalent of Marine Corps basic trainingÑthat being taught by all those brilliant professors and meeting all those other motivated students and getting a degree with that powerful name on it will 35)confer advantages that no local state university can provide. 36)Fuelling the treatment-effect idea are studies showing that if you take two students with the same S.A.T. scores and grades, one of whom goes to a school like Harvard and one of whom goes to a less selective college, the Ivy Leaguer will make far more money ten or twenty years down the road.
The extraordinary emphasis the Ivy League places on admissions policies, though, makes it seem more like a modelling agency than the Marine Corps, and, sure enough, the studies based on those two apparently equivalent students turn out to be 37)flawed. How do we know that two students who have the same S.A.T. scores and grades really are equivalent? It’s quite possible that the student who goes to Harvard is more 38)ambitious and 39)energetic and 40)personable than the student who wasn’t let in, and that those same 41)intangibles are what account for his better career success. Three years ago, the economists Alan Krueger and Stacy Dale published just such a study. And they found that when you compare apples and apples the income bonus from selective schools disappears.
“As a 42)hypothetical example, take the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State, which are two schools a lot of students choose between,” Krueger said. “One is Ivy, one is a state school. Penn is much more highly selective. You would think that the more ambitious student is the one who would choose to go to Penn, and the ones choosing to go to Penn State might be a little less confident in their abilities or have a little lower family income, and both of those factors would point to people doing worse later on. But they don’t.”
Krueger says that there is one exception to
this. Students from the very lowest economic 43)strata
do seem to benefit from going
to an Ivy. But if you are a hardworking and intelligent person you’ll
end up doing well regardless of where you went to school. You’ll
make good contacts at Penn. But Penn State is big enough and diverse enough that
you can make good contacts there, too. Having Penn on your 44)résumé
opens doors. But if you are good enough, those doors will open for you anyway.
中国每年的高考都是牵动千家万户的声势浩大的“人民战争”。莘莘学子挥汗如雨，争着挤过高考“独木桥”，而考场外的家长拎着茶点，里外三层地紧张守候。即使考上大学了，大学毕业时还要挤另一道“独木桥”——在严峻的就业形势下，你的毕业文凭比其他人“响亮”吗？再看看本文，读者们是否很羡慕加拿大的学生呢？那里的高校没有明显的优劣之分，教学都是统一的高水准，学力中等的学生入读大学是没问题的，问题只是他们愿不愿意读。对于资源短缺、人口膨胀的中国来说，要赶上加拿大的教育强势非朝夕之事，要靠每代人不懈的努力了。
在高中最后一年的秋季，一天傍晚，吃过晚餐后，我开始填写入读高校的申请表。在当时，加拿大安大略省的学生申请入读高校时，都会得到一张全省大学的清单。我的工作就是按自己的意愿，把最想入读的学校按次序排列。然后，我把这张“选校名单”寄回高校联合招生办公室就可以了，整个过程大概只需十分钟。而我就读的高中，会自行把我的成绩单寄到招生办。我大约记得，当时我还填写了一份两页纸的表格，列出我的兴趣及参加过的活动。我们从来不担心自己的S.A.T.成绩，因为在加拿大，学生是不需要参加S.A.T.考试的。我不知道是否有人为我写了推荐信，但我可以肯定的是，我从没叫过别人给我写推荐信。我为什么要那样做呢？我又不是在申请加入高级私人俱乐部。
我把多伦多大学排在选校名单的首位，西安大略大学排第二，女王大学排第三。我不断地清理我函购回来的一大堆介绍各大学的小册子。我父母为我申报高校做出了一些贡献，包括一天下午，父亲开车送我去多伦多大学的校园。我在校园里四处溜达，而父亲则把头探进招生办公室，跟招生办的负责人聊了一阵子，我想，他要不就是向负责人说几句“我的儿子多聪明”之类的话，要不就是谈论一下学院花圃里种的飞燕草—据我对他的了解。然后，我们就去吃了冰激凌。就这样，多伦多大学录取了我。
我如愿以偿地进入了多伦多大学—这是我的第一志愿，不是第二或第三志愿，这表示我比别人优秀或成功吗？这是一个很耐人寻味的问题。在安大略省，高校并没有明显的优劣排行。这里好的大学有好几所，比较知名的也有好几所，另外也有不少世界闻名的课程，例如沃特卢大学的计算机科学。由于所有高校都隶属公共教育系统，所以学费都是统一的，你的高中平均成绩只要达到B级，就足以确保你入读高校了。因此，在这里我们不会觉得选择入读哪一所高校是人生的重大“抉择”。重要的是我们是否想读大学，更重要的是，当我们进了大学后是否认真学习。我以为每个人都是这么想的，所以当我第一次遇见曾在哈佛大学就读的人时，你可以想象到我的困惑。
首先，有些人一开始莫名其妙地不愿意提起他们就读的学校—眼睛往下一扫，双脚不自然地动一动，含含糊糊地说出在剑桥市读书。我就问：“在哈佛么？”当时我刚刚移居美国，不懂当地的“规则”。对方极不自然地点了点头。他们好像在说：“不要根据我就读的学校来评价我”，其实他们的反应却意味着：学校的确是评价一个人的根据。当然，事实也是这样。不管在哪里，只要有一位哈佛毕业生在场，而不远处也有另一位校友的话，话匣子就准备打开了—追忆当年他们申请入学时如何艰难地撰写论文，或者煞有介事地谈论某某王子身在何方。在美国人的小说里，那个成熟、感觉敏锐的主角总是哈佛的学生，若他因为某些问题而中途辍学，到最后他总会重返哈佛完成毕业论文。有一次，我参加一位五十多岁的哈佛校友的婚礼，那位伴郎在婚礼上细数与新郎在哈佛读书时的日子，就像过去三十年里，没有比这更重要的“丰功伟绩”了。最后，我原以为他会脱去衬衫，骄傲地展露胸口那个深红色的“H”字母（哈佛英文名称的首字母）纹身。
社会科学家把我们所说的“训练效应”和“选择效应”加以区分。例如美国海军陆战队就是典型的“训练效应”的组织，它没有一个庞大的征兵办公室按坚韧性及智力来评选申请者。他们相信，任何人只要接受海军陆战队的基本训练，都可以变成一个令敌人丧胆的战士。而模特儿中介公司则刚好相反，是一个“选择效应”的机构。你跟模特儿中介公司签了合约后，不会使你变成花容月貌，他们跟你签约，是因为你原本就美丽动人。
美国人对常春藤盟校痴情不已，最主要是因为他们相信像哈佛这样的常春藤盟校，可以向学生提供像海军陆战队基本训练一样的社会及心智方面的发展——在那里，你受到睿智卓越的教授传授知识，跟那些积极向上的同学交往，而且拿着这样一个有着名校印记的学位，会对你无往不利，而没有一间州立大学能与之相比。促使“训练效应”受人追捧的原因是，有研究指出，如果有两个S.A.T.分数和级别相同的学生，其中一个进入了如哈佛一般的名校，另一个则入了一间较不知名的大学，那位常春藤盟校的学生，在十至二十年内赚到的钱，远比另一位多。
事实上，常春藤盟校极其强调入学甄选制度，这使这些名校看来更像一所模特儿中介公司而不是海军陆战队。当然，上述研究看来存在缺陷——我们如何知道，两个在S.A.T.考试中取得相同分数及级别的学生是不是在其它方面的能力也是一样？很有可能，入读哈佛的学生原本就比那位入读次级学校的学生积极进取、惹人喜爱，而这些无形的特质却是他事业成功的因素。三年前，经济学家艾伦·鲁克格及斯泰西·戴尔发表了一个研究，他们指出，当比较两个特质相近的人时，名校学生的赚钱优势就会消失。
鲁克格说：“以宾夕法尼亚大学（宾大）及宾夕法尼亚州州立大学（宾州大）为假设性例子，很多学生都会在这两所大学之间做出选择。前者是常春藤盟校，后者是州立大学。宾大对学生精挑细选。你会想，选择入读宾大的学生一定比较积极进取，而选择入读宾州大的学生一定对自己的能力没有自信，又或者家境不太宽裕，而这两项因素都有可能对他们日后的发展造成负面影响。但事实并非如此。”
鲁克格说，事情是有例外的。社会经济地位十分低下的学生入读常春藤盟校看来是有好处的。但如果你是一个用功且聪明的学生，无论你入读的是哪一所学校，你最终都会有所成就。在宾大，你会建立一个很好的人际网络。然而，宾州大是一间规模大和多元化的大学，也足够让你建立一个很好的人际网络。在你的履历表上，写上“毕业于宾大”可以为你打开事业之门 ，但如果你本身十分优秀，那些事业之门怎么也会为你开启的。