Excellent Sheep-Ch2-The History

今天这部分主要讲述美国高校（哈佛、耶鲁、哥伦比亚大学等）的发展历程。1965年的婴儿潮是美国大学招生录取的转折点：从原有的贵族制（aristocracy），进入全新的精英管理制度（meritocracy），而这便是现今大学录取机制的由来。

Nineteen sixty-five, the year of Brewster’s revolution— which was also right around the time the baby boomers started to arrive on campus— can be taken as the pivot, in college admissions, from the old aristocracy to the new meritocracy: from caste, “character,” and connections to scores and grades.

And that is the origin of the system that we are still living with today.

作者通过其2008年参与的一次耶鲁大学招生办工作的经历，告诉我们，在众多的申请者里，高校寻找的是能让人眼前一亮有特殊品质的学生（personal quality）。

Successful applicants could either be “well-rounded” or “pointy”— outstanding in one particular way— but if they were pointy, they had to be really pointy: a musician whose audition tape had impressed the music department, a scientist who had won a national award.

成功的申请者，要么是“全能冠军”，要么是“偏才”。若是“偏才” 的话，得足够“偏”，比如，曾获得国家级奖项的理科生。不过，现实是，大部分学生还是得以“全能型”为目标，你必须得有一两项绝活，但同时在其他方面也得有优秀表现。

You have to be great at one or two things— but you also have to be really, really good at everything else.

You have, in other words, to do it all: get A’s in all your classes, compete for leadership positions, pile up the extracurriculars— be a Super Person.

简言之，要将自己打造成一位“超人” — 全A的成绩，具备竞争领导的能力，足够多的课外活动经历。