题型：任务型阅读 题类：常考题 难易度：普通
江苏省启东中学2020届高三上学期英语期初考试试卷
This time of year, thousands of college applicants wait for enotices and auspiciously(吉利地) sized envelopes from schools, under terrible pressure from their parents, friends, teachers, and themselves. As to this, I offer some advice, which comes not only from a bit of experience, but also a bit of research: just cool out and continue, okay?
Many parents and students think there is a world of difference between the lifelong outcomes of an Aminus student who gets into, say. Princeton, and an Aminus student who applies to Princeton but "only" gets into some less selective school, like Penn State or the University of Wisconsin. They assume that a decision made by faceless Ivy League admissions officers, to some extent, will mark the difference between success and failure in life.
There are two important things to say about this stress. First, to put the anxiety into context, the kids applying to these schools are already doing quite well. Seventy percent of 29-year-olds don't have a bachelor's degree, and the majority of BAs are earned at nonselective schools that accept a majority of their applicants. Many of the applicants have already won life's lottery.
But if that doesn't ease the nerves of the 40,000 people waiting on Stanford or Penn, here is a more encouraging conclusion from economics. For most applicants, it doesn't matter if they don't get into their top choice, according to a paper by Stacy Dale, a mathematician at Mathematica Policy Research, and Alan Krueger, an economist at Princeton University. They tracked two groups of students——one that attended college in the 1970s and the other in the early 1990s. They wanted to know：Did students attending the most elite colleges earn more in their 30s. 40s. and 50s than students with similar SAT scores, who were rejected by elite colleges? The short answer was no. Or, in the author's language, the difference between the students who went to superselective schools and the students with similar SAT scores rejected by those schools and went to less selective institutions was "indistinguishable from zero."
What does that mean? It means that, for many students, "who you are" is more important than where you go. It's hard to show that highly selective colleges add much earning power, even with their distinguished professors and professional networks. In addition, the decision of admissions officers isn't as important as the sum of the decisions, habits, and relationships students have built up to this point in their young life.
For the elite colleges themselves, the DaleKrueger paper had additional, fascinating findings. It's found that the most selective schools do make an extraordinary difference in life earning for minority students from less-educated families who are more likely to rely on colleges to provide the training and job networks with great influence. Getting into Princeton if your parents went to Princeton? Fine, although not a gamechanger. But getting into Princeton if your parents both left community college after a year? That could be gamechanging. Whatever the results, it's more important to choose a university that is suited to the college applicants.
What is an elite college really worth for? | |
Introduction | College applicants tend to feelwhile awaiting admission decisions. |
Author's advice | College applicants should cool down and carry . |
General | Success and failure in life is partly by which school you will go to. |
Two important things | Those to the top universities have already won half the battle in their young life. Students graduating from top universities don't necessarily earn more money than those who are turned by top universities. |
Implication of the research | qualities matter more than where a student gets degree. can be more important than the social and problem-solving skills students have acquired. |
Additional findings of the research | Minority students from lesseducated families can gain access to the networks through highly selective colleges. |
Conclusion | It makes sense to find a good . |
When times are tough, how should governments in poor countries ensure their citizens remain fed? In the past, most of them used subsidies (现金补助) to keep food prices low for all their citizens. But these policies have become ineffective: the cost of maintaining Egypt's food subsidies, for instance, nearly doubled between 2009 and 2013. And much of the money goes to the wrong people. In Egypt and the Philippines less than 20% of spending on food subsidies goes to poor households. In the Middle East and North Africa only 35% of subsidies reach 40% of the poorest, the IMF notes.
Motivated by a desire to control growing budget deficits (赤字) , many countries are replacing broad subsidies with policies aimed more directly at the needy. But what form should the targeted aid take? Earlier this month Iran introduced free handouts of food to replace its subsidy method. Other countries, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, have chosen instead to provide extra cash benefits to the poor. So far, food vouchers (代金券) have been the least popular option. Proposals to introduce food vouchers in such countries as Malaysia have been rejected on the basis that they were too American and un-Asian.
However, the researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) thought that might have been a mistake and analyzed the results of an experiment conducted by the World Food Programme in Ecuador, a South American country, in 2011, which compared handouts of food, cash and vouchers in the experiment. The study found that direct handouts— Iran's new policy—were the least effective option. They cost three times as much as vouchers to promote calorie intake by 15%, and were four times as costly as a way of increasing dietary diversity and quality. Distribution costs were high, and wastage was also a problem. Only 63% of the food given away was actually eaten, while 83% of the cash was spent on food and 99% of the vouchers were exchanged as intended. Food handouts have also been the costliest option in similar projects in some African countries, according to John Hoddinott at IFPRI.
In Ecuador there was little difference in cost between handing out cash and food vouchers, the other two options. But food vouchers were better at encouraging people to buy healthier foods because of restrictions on what items could be exchanged for them. It was 25% cheaper to promote the quality of household nutrition using food vouchers than it was by handing out cash.
A switch from universal subsidies to vouchers could be the most efficient way of promoting health as well as relieving poverty. This is very necessary in many developing countries, according to Lynn Brown, a consultant for the World Bank.
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Topic |
Feeding expectations: Why food vouchers are a policy {#blank#}1{#/blank#} consideration in developing countries? |
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Aim of universal subsidies |
To {#blank#}2{#/blank#} for the citizens in poor countries. |
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Analyses of three policies |
Cash ●It keeps food prices low for all citizens. ●It is not {#blank#}3{#/blank#} in the long term: ＊The cost keeps increasing. ＊Much of the money doesn't reach those really in {#blank#}4{#/blank#} . |
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Handouts of food ●The food can reach the needy {#blank#}5{#/blank#} . ●They cost twice more than vouchers to promote calorie intake. ●A lot of the food handed out is wasted, thus {#blank#}6{#/blank#} a matter of wastage. |
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Food vouchers ●They work better when it {#blank#}7{#/blank#} to encouraging people to buy healthier foods. ●{#blank#}8{#/blank#} with handing out cash, using food vouchers costs much less. ●They are too American and un-Asian. |
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Conclusion |
It's a {#blank#}9{#/blank#} to use vouchers in many developing countries because it not only helps to{#blank#}10{#/blank#} poverty but also promotes health most efficiently. |
试题篮
) 并在其下面写出该加的词。删除：把多余的词用斜线(\)划掉。修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。注意：每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；只允许修改10处，多者（从第11处起）不计分。