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For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English. 在中国文化中，红色通常象征着好运、长寿和幸福，在春节和其他喜庆场合，红色到处可见。人们把现金作为礼物送给家人或亲密朋友时，通常放在红信封里。红色在中国流行的另一个原因是人们把它与中国革命和共产党相联系。然而，红色并不总是代表好运和快乐。因为从前死者的名字常用红色书写，用红墨水书写中国人名被看成是一种冒犯行为。

The secret to eating less and being happy about it may have been cracked years ago—by McDonald’s. According to a new study from Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, small non-food rewards—like the toys in McDonald’s Happy Meals—stimulate the same reward centers in the brain as food does.The researchers, led by Martin Reimann, carried out a series of experiments to see if people would choose a smaller meal if it was paired with a non-food item.They found that the majority of both kids and adults opted for a half-sized portion when combined with a prize. Both options were priced the same.Even more interesting is that the promise of a future reward was enough to make adults choose the smaller portion. One of the prizes used was a lottery ticket (彩票),with a $10, $50 or $100 payout, and this was as effective as a tangible gift in persuading people to eat less.“The fact that participants were willing to substitute part of a food item for the mere prospect of a relatively small monetary award is interesting,” says Reimann.He theorizes that it is the emotional component, of these intangible prizes that make them effective. In fact, vaguely-stated possibilities of winning a prized were more effective than options with hard odds included.“One explanation for this finding is that possible awards may be more emotionally provoking than certainty awards,” says Reimann. “The uncertainty of winning provides added attraction and desirability through emotional ’thrills.’ The possibility of receiving an award also produces a state of hope—a state that is in itself psychologically rewarding.” In other words, there’s a reason why people like to gamble.How might this knowledge be used to help people eat more healthily?One possibility is a healthy option that offers the chance to win a spa (温泉疗养)weekend. Or maybe the reward of a half-sized portion could be a half-sized dessert to be claimed only on a future date. That would get you back in the restaurant—and make you eat a little less.What do we learn about McDonald’s inclusion of toys in its Happy Meals?What is the finding of the researchers led by Martin Reimaiin?What is most interesting in Martin Reimann’s finding?How does Martin Reimann interpret his finding?What can we infer from Martin Reinmann’s finding?

Recently I attended several meetings where we talked about ways to retain students and keep younger faculty members from going elsewhere.It seems higher education has become an industry of meeting-holders whose task it is to “solve” problems——real or imagined. And in my position as a professor at three different colleges, the actual problems in educating our young people and older students have deepened, while the number of people hired——not to teach but to hold meetings——has increased significantly. Every new problem creates a new job for an administrative fixer. Take our Center for Teaching Excellence. Contrary to its title, the center is a clearing house (信息交流中心)for using technology in classrooms and in online courses. It’s an administrative sham (欺诈) of the kind that has multiplied over the last 30 years.I offer a simple proposition in response: Many of our problems — class attendance, educational success, student happiness and well-being——might be improved by cutting down the bureaucratic (官僚的) mechanisms and meetings and instead hiring an army of good teachers. If we replaced half of our administrative staff with classroom teachers, we might actually get a majority of our classes back to 20 or fewer students per teacher. This would be an environment in which teachers and students actually knew each other.The teachers must be free to teach in their own way——the curriculum should be flexible enough so that they can use their individual talents to achieve the goals of the course. Additionally, they should be allowed to teach, and be rewarded for doing it well. Teachers are not people who are great at and consumed by research and happen to appear in a classroom. Good teaching and research are not exclusive, but they are also not automatic companions. Teaching is an art and a craft, talent and practice; it is not something that just anyone can be good at. It is utterly confusing to me that people do not recognize this, despite the fact that pretty much anyone who has been a student can tell the difference between their best and worst teachers.What does the author say about present-day universities?According to the author, what kind of people do universities lack most?What does the author imply about the classes at present?What does the author think of teaching ability?What is the author’s suggestion for improving university teaching?

When Work Becomes a Game[A] What motivates employees to do their jobs well? Competition with coworkers, for some. The promise of rewards，for others. Pure enjoyment of problem-solving, for a lucky few.[B] Increasingly, companies are tapping into these desires directly through what has come to be known as “gamification”： essentially, turning work into a game. “Gamification is about understanding what it is that makes games engaging and what game designers do to create a great experience in games, and taking those learnings and applying them to other contexts such as the workplace and education,” explains Kevin Werbach, a gamification expert who teaches at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States.[C] It might mean monitoring employee productivity on a digital leaderboard and offering prizes to the winners, or giving employees digital badges or stars for completing certain activities. Il could also mean training employees how to do their jobs through video game platforms. Companies from Google to L’Oreal to IBM to Wells Fargo are known to use some degree of gamification in their workplaces. And more and more companies are joining them. A recent report suggests that the global gamification market will grow from $1.65 billion in 2015 to $11.1 billion by 2020.[D] The concept of gamification is not entirely new, Werbach says. Companies, marketers and teachers have long looked for fun ways to engage people’s reward-seeking or competitive spirits. Cracker Jacks has been “gamifying” its snack food by putting a small prize inside for more than 100 years, he adds, and the tum-of-the-century steel magnate (巨头) Charles Schwab is said to have often come into his factory and written the number of tons of steel produced on the past shift on the factory floor, thus motivating the next shift of workers to beat the previous one.[E] But the word “gamification” and the widespread, conscious application of the concept only began in earnest about five years ago, Werbach says. Thanks in part to video games, the generation now entering the workforce is especially open to the idea of having their work gamified. “We are at a point where in much ()1’ the developed world the vast majority of young people grew up playing video games, and an increasingly high percentage of adults play these video games too,” Werbach says.[F] A number of companies have sprung up—GaniEffective, Bunchball and Badgeville, to name a few—in recent years offering gamification platforms for businesses. The platforms that are most effective turn employees’ ordinary job tasks into part of a rich adventure narrative. “What makes a game game-like is that the player actually cares about the outcome,” Werbach says. “The principle is about understanding what is motivating to this group of players, which requires some understanding of psychology.”[G] Some people, Werbach says, are motivated by competition. Sales people often fall into this category. For them, the right kind of gamification might be turning their sales pitches into a competition with other team members, complete with a digital leaderboard showing who is wiiining at? all times. Others are more motivated by collaboration and social experiences. One company Werbach has studied uses gamification to create a sense of community and boost employees’ morale （士气）.When employees log in to their computers, they’re shown a picture of one of their coworkers and asked to guess that person’s name.[H] Gamification does not have to be digital. Monica Cometti runs a company that gamifies employee trainings. Sometimes this involves technology, but often it does not. She recently designed a gamification strategy for a sales training company with a storm-chasing theme. Employees formed “storm chaser teams” and competed in storm-themed educational exercises to earn various rewards. “Rewards do not have to be stuff,” Cometti says. “Rewards can be flexible working hours.” Another training, this one for pay roll law, used a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs theme. “Snow White” is available for everyone to use, but the “dwarfs” are still under copyright, so Cometti invented sound-alike characters （Grumpy Gus, Dopey Dan） to illustrate specific pay roll law principles.[I] Some people do not take naturally to gamified work environments, Cometti says. In her experience,people in positions of power or people in finance or engineering do not tend to like the sound of the word. “If we’re designing for engineers, I’m not talking about a ‘game’ at all," Cometti says. “I’m talking about a "simulation’ （模拟），I’m talking about ‘being able to solve this problem.”’[J] Gamification is ‘not a magic bullet,” Werbach warns. A gamification strategy that is not sufficiently thought through or well tailored to its players may engage people for a little while, but it will not motivate people in the long term. It can also be exploitative, especially when used with vulnerable populations. For workers, especially low-paid workers, who desperately need their jobs yet know they can be easily replaced, gamification may feel more like the Hunger Gaines. Werbach gives the example of several Disneyland hotels in Anaheim, California，which used large digital leaderboards to display how efficiently laundry workers were working compared to one another. Some employees found the board motivating. To others, it was the opposite of fun. Some began to stop taking bathroom breaks, worried that if their productivity fell they would be fired. Pregnant employees struggled to keep up. In a Los Angeles Times article, one employee referred to the board as a “digital whip.” “It actually had a very negative effect on morale and performance,” Werbach says.[K] Still, gamification only stands to become more popular, he says, “as more and more people come into the workforce who are familiar with the structures and expressions of digital games.” “We are far from reaching the peak,” Cometti agrees. “There’s no reason this will go away.”

When someone commits a criminal act, we always hope the punishment will match the offense. But when it comes to one of the cruelest crimes—animal fighting—things（）work out that way. Dog-fighting victims are （） and killed for profit and “sport,” yet their criminal abusers often receive a （） sentence for causing a lifetime of pain. Roughly half of all federally-convicted animal fighters only get probation (缓刑).Some progress has been made in the prosecution (起诉)of animal Fighters. But federal judges often rely heavily on the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines when they （） penalties, and in the case of animal fighting, those guidelines are outdated and extremely （） .The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which （） these sentencing guidelines, is revisiting them, proposing to raise the minimum sentence from 6-12 to 21-27 months. This is a step in the right （） , but we’d like to see the U.S. Sentencing Commission make further changes to the guidelines.Along with this effort, we’re working with animal advocates and state and federal lawmakers to （） anti-cruelty laws across the country, as well as supporting laws and policies that assist overburdened animal（） that care for animal fighting victims. This help is（） important because the high cost of caring for animal victims is a major factor that prevents people from getting involved in cruelty cases in the first place.

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay. Suppose you have two options upon graduation: one is to find a job somewhere and the other Io start a business of your own. You are to make a decision. Write an essay to explain the reasons for your decision. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

For this part., you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English. 在中国文化中，黄颜色是一种很重要的颜色，因为它具有独特的象征意义。在封建（feudal）社会中，它象征统治者的权力和权威。那时，黄色是专为皇帝使用的颜色，皇家宫殿全都漆成黄色，皇袍总是黄色的，而普通老百姓是禁止穿黄色衣服的。在中国，黄色也是收获的象征。秋天庄稼成熟时，田野变得一片金黄。人们兴高采烈，庆祝丰收。

You may have heard some of the fashion industry horror stories: models eating tissues or cotton balls to hold off hunger, and models collapsing from hunger-induced heart attacks just seconds after they step off the runway.Excessively skinny models have been a point of controversy for decades, and two researchers say a model’s body mass should be a workplace health and safety issue. In an editorial released Monday in the American Journal of Public Healthy Katherine Record and Bryn Austin made their case for government regulation of the fashion industry.The average international runway model has a body mass index (BMI) under 16—low enough to indicate starvation by the World Health Organization’s standard. And Record and Austin are worried not just about the models themselves, but about the vast number of girls and women their images influence.“Especially girls and teens,” says Record. "Seventy percent of girls aged 10 to 18 report that they define perfect body image based on what they see in magazines.” That’s especially worrying, she says, given that anorexia (厌食症)results in more deaths than does any other mental illness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.It’s commonly known that certain diseases are linked with occupations like lung disease in coal miners. Professional fashion models are particularly vulnerable to eating disorders resulting from occupational demands to maintain extreme thinness.Record’s suggestion is to prohibit agents from hiring models with a BMI below 18.In April, France passed a law setting lower limits for a model’s weight. Agents and fashion houses who hire models with a BMI under 18 could pay $82,000 in fines and spend up to 6 months in jail. Regulating the fashion industry in the United States won’t be easy, Record says. But with the new rules in France, U.S. support could make a difference. “A designer can’t survive without participating in Paris Fashion Week”，she says, adding, “Our argument is that the same would be true of New York Fashion Week.”What do Record and Austin say about fashion models’ body mass?What are Record and Austin advocating in the Monday editorial?Why are Record and Austin especially worried about the low body mass index of models?What do we learn about France’s fashion industry?What does Record expect of New York Fashion Week?

“Sugar, alcohol and tobacco,” economist Adani Smith once wrote, “are commodities which are nowherenecessaries of life, which have become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are, there¬fore, extremely popular subjects of taxation.”Two and a half centuries on, most countries impose some sort of tax on alcohol and tobacco. With surging obesity levels putting increasing strain on public health systems, governments around the world have begun to toy with the idea of taxing sugar as well.Whether such taxes work is a matter of debate. A preliminary review of Mexico’s taxation found a fall in purchases of taxed drinks as well as a rise in sales of untaxed and healthier drinks. By contrast, a Danish tax on foods high in fats was abandoned a year after its introduction, amid claims that con¬sumers were avoiding it by crossing the border to Germany to satisfy their desire for cheaper, fattier fare.The food industry has, in general, been firmly opposed to such direct government action. Nonethe¬less, the renewed focus on waistlines means that industry groups are under pressure to demonstrate their products are healthy as well as tasty.Over the past three decades, the industry has made some efforts to improve the quality of its offerings. For example, some drink manufacturers have cut the amount of sugar in their beverages.Many of the reductions over the past 30 years have been achieved either by reducing the amount of sugar, salt or fat in a product, or by finding an alternative ingredient. More recently, however, some companies have been investing money in a more ambitious undertaking: learning how to adjust the fundamental make-up of the food they sell. For example, having salt on the outside, but none on the inside, reduces the salt content without changing the taste.While reformulating recipes (配方)is one way to improve public health, it should be part of a multi¬sided approach. The key is to remember that there is not just one solution. To deal with obesity, a mixture of approaches—including reformulation, taxation and adjusting portion sizes—will be needed. There is no silver bullet.What did Adam Smith say about sugar, alcohol and tobacco?Why have many countries started to consider taxing sugar?What do we learn about Danish taxation on fat-rich foods?What is the more recent effort by food companies to make foods and drinks both healthy and tasty?What does the author mean by saying, at the end of the passage, “There is no silver bullet” (Line 4,Para. 7)?

The Secret to Raising Smart Kids[A] I first began to investigate the basis of human motivation—and how people persevere after set-backs—as a psychology graduate student at Yale University in the 1960s. Animal experiments by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania had shown that after repeated failures, most animals conclude that a situation is hopeless and beyond their control. After such an experience an animal often remains passive even when it can effect change—a state they called learned helplessness.[B] People can learn to be helpless, too. Why do some students give up when they encounter difficulty, whereas others who are no more skilled continue to strive and learn? One answer, I soon discovered, lay in people’s beliefs about why they had failed.[C] In particular, attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame. When I told a group of school children who displayed helpless behavior that a lack of effort led to their mistakes in math, they learned to keep trying when the problems got tough. Another group of helpless children who were simply rewarded for their success on easier problems did not improve their ability to solve hard math problems. These experiments indicated that a focus on effort can help resolve helplessness and generate success.[D] Later, I developed a broader theory of what separates the two general classes of learners—helpless versus mastery-oriented. I realized these different types of students not only explain their failures differently, but they also hold different “theories” of intelligence. The helpless ones believe intelligence is a fixed characteristic: you have only a certain amount, and that’s that. I call this a “fixed mind-set （思维模式）Mistakes crack their self-confidence because they attribute errors to a lack of ability, which they feel powerless to change. They avoid challenges because challenges make mistakes more likely. The mastery-oriented children, on the other hand, think intelligence is not fixed and can be developed through education and hard work. Such children believe challenges are energizing rather than intimidating （令人生喪）；they offer opportunities to learn. Students with such a growth mind-set were destined （;主定）for greater academic success and were quite likely to outperform their counterparts.[E] We validated these expectations in a study in which two other psychologists and I monitored 373 students for two years during the transition to junior high school, when the work gets more difficult and the grading more strict, to determine how their mind-sets might affect their math grades. At the beginning of seventh grade, we assessed the students’ mind-sets by asking them to agree or disagree with statements such as “Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t really change.” We then assessed their beliefs about other aspects of learning and looked to see what happened to their grades.[F] As predicted, the students with a growth niind-set felt that learning was a more important goal than getting good grades. In addition, they held hard work in high regard. They understood, that even geniuses have to work hard. Confronted by a setback such as a disappointing test grade, students with a growth mind-set said they would study harder or try a different strategy. The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with less regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard was a sign of low ability.They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well. Attributing a bad grade to their own lack of ability, those with a fixed mind-set said that they would study less in the future, try never to take that subject again and consider cheating on future tests.[G] Such different outlooks had a dramatic impact on performance. At the start of junior high, the math achievement test scores of the students with a growth mind-set were comparable to those of students who displayed a fixed mind-set. But as the work became more difficult, the students with a growth mind-set showed greater persistence. As a result, their math grades overtook those of the other students by the end of the first semester—and the gap between the two groups continued to widen during the two years we followed them.[H] A fixed mind-set can also hinder communication and progress in the workplace and discourage or ignore constructive criticism and advice. Research shows that managers who have a fixed mind-set are less likely to seek or welcome feedback from their employees than are managers with a growth mind-set.[I] How do we transmit a growth mind-set to our children? One way is by telling stories about achievements that result from hard work. For instance, talking about mathematical geniuses who were more or less bom that way puts students in a fixed mind-set, but descriptions of great mathematicians who fell in love with math and developed amazing skills produce a growth mind-set.[J] In addition, parents and teachers can help children by providing explicit instruction regarding the mind as a learning machine. I designed an eight-session workshop for 91 students whose math grades were declining in their first year of junior high. Forty-eight of the students received instruction in study skills only, whereas the others attended a combination of study skills sessions and classes in which they learned about the growth mind-set and how to apply it to schoolwork. In the growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an article entitled “You Can Grow Your Brain.” They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts the brain to grow new connections. From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Despite being unaware that there- were two types of instruction, teachers reported significant motivational changes in 27% of the children in the growth mind-set workshop as compared with only 9% of students in the control group.[K] Research is converging （汇聚）on the conclusion that great accomplishment and even genius is typically the result of years of passion and dedication and not something that flows naturally from a gift.

The ocean is heating up. That’s the conclusion of a new study that finds that Earth’s oceans now（） heat at twice the rate they did 18 years ago. Around half of ocean heat intake since 1865 has taken place since 1997, researchers report online in Nature Climate Change.Warming waters are known to （） to coral bleaching (珊瑚白化)and they take up more space than cooler waters, raising sea （） While the top of the ocean is well studied, its depths are more difficult to （） . The researchers gathered 150 years of ocean temperature data in order to get a better （） of heat absorption from surface to seabed. They gathered together temperature readings collected by everything from a 19th century （） of British naval ships to modem automated ocean probes. The extensive data sources, （） with computer simulations (计算机模拟), created a timeline of ocean temperature changes, including cooling from volcanic outbreaks and warming from fossil fuel （） . About 35 percent of the heat taken in by the oceans during the industrial era now resides at a （） of more than 700 meters, the researchers found. They say they’re （） whether the deep- sea warming canceled out warming at the sea’s surface.

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes lo write an essay. Suppose you have two options upon graduation: one is to take a job in a company and the other to go to a graduate school. You are to make a choice between the two. Write an essay to explain the reasons for your choice. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English. 自行车曾经是中国城乡最主要的交通工具，中国一度被称为“自行车王国'。如今，随着城市交通拥堵和空气污染日益严重，骑自行车又开始流行起来。近来，中国企业家将移动互联网技术与传统自行车结合在一起，发明了一种称为共享单车(shared bikes)的商业模式。共享单车的出现使骑车出行更加方便，人们仅需一部手机就可以随时使用共享单车。为了鼓励人们骑车出行，很多城市修建了自行车道。现在，越来越多的中国人也喜欢通过骑车健身。

Economically speaking, are we better off than we were ten years ago? Twenty years ago?In their thirst for evidence on this issue, commentators seized on the recent report by the Census Bureau, which found that average household income rose by 5.2% in 2015. Unfortunately, that conclusion puts too much weight on a useful, but flawed and incomplete, statistic. Among the more significant problems with the Census’s measure are that: 1) it excludes taxes, transfers, and compensation like employer-provided health insurance; and 2) it is based on surveys rather than data. Even if precisely measured, income data exclude important determinants of economic well-being, such as the hours of work needed to earn that income.While thinking about the question, we came across a recently published article by Charles Jones and Peter Klenow, which proposes an interesting new measure of economic welfare. While by no means perfect, it is considerably more comprehensive than average income, taking into account not only growth in consumption per person but also changes in working time, life expectancy, and inequality. Moreover, it can be used to assess economic performance both across countries and over time.The Jones-Klenow method can be illustrated by a cross-country example. Suppose we want to compare the economic welfare of citizens of the U.S. and France in 2005.In 2005, as the authors observe, real consumption per person in France was only 60% as high as the U.S., making it appear that Americans were economically much better off than the French on average. However, that comparison omits other relevant factors: leisure time, life expectancy, and economic inequality. The French take longer vacations and retire earlier, so typically work fewer hours; they enjoy a higher life expectancy, presumably reflecting advantages with respect to health care, diet, lifestyle, and the like; and income and consumption are somewhat more equally distributed there than in the U.S. Because of these differences, comparing France’s consumption with the U.S.’s overstates the gap in economic welfare.Similar calculations can be used to compare the U.S. and other countries. For example, this calculation puts economic welfare in the United Kingdom at 97% of U.S. levels, but estimates Mexican well-being at 22%.The Jones-Klenow measure can also assess an economy’s performance over time. According to this measure, as of the early-to-mid-2000s, the U.S. had the highest economic welfare of any large country. Since 2007, economic welfare m the U.S. has continued to improve. However, the pace of improvement has slowed markedly.Methodologically, the lesson from the Jones-Klenow research is that economic welfare is multidimensional. Their approach is flexible enough that in principle other important quality-of-life changes could be incorporated—for example, decreases in total emissions of pollutants and declines in crime rates.What does the author think of the 2015 report by the Census Bureau?What does the author say about the Jones-Klenow method?What do Jones and Klenow think of the comparison between France and the U.S. in terms of real consumption per person?What is an advantage of the Jones-Klenow method?What can we infer from the passage about American people’s economic well-being?

If you've ever started a sentence with, “If I were you...” or found yourself scratching your head at a colleague's agony over a decision when the answer is crystal-clear, there’s a scientific reason behind it. Our own decision-making abilities can become depleted over the course of the day causing indecision or poor choices, but choosing on behalf of someone else is an enjoyable task that doesn't suffer the same pitfalls.The problem is “decision fatigue,” a psychological phenomenon that takes a toll on the quality of your choices after a long day of decision making, says Evan Polman, a leading psychologist.Physicians who have been on the job for several hours, for example, are more likely to prescribe antibiotics to patients when it's unwise to do so. “Presumably it’s because it’s simple and easy to write a prescription and consider a patient case closed rather than investigate further” Polman says.But decision fatigue goes away when you are making the decision for someone else. When people imagine themselves as advisers and imagine their own choices as belonging to someone else, they feel less tired and rely less on decision shortcuts to make those choices. “By taking upon the role of adviser rather than decision maker, one does not suffer the consequences of decision fatigue,” he says. “It’s as if there’s something fun and liberating about making someone else’s choice.”Getting input from others not only offers a fresh perspective and thought process, it often also includes riskier choices. While this sounds undesirable, it can be quite good, says Polman. “When people experience decision fatigue—when they are tired of making choices— they have a tendency to choose to go with the status quo (现状)，” he says. “But the status quo can be problematic, since a change in the course of action can sometimes be important and lead to a positive outcome.”In order to achieve a successful outcome or reward, some level of risk is almost always essential. “People who are susceptible to decision fatigue will likely choose to do nothing over something，” he says. “That’s not to say that risk is always good, but it is related to taking action, whereas decision fatigue assuredly leads to inaction and the possible chagrin (懊恼)of a decision maker who might otherwise prefer a new course but is unfortunately hindered.”Just because you can make good choices for others doesn’t mean you’ll do the same for yourself, Polman cautions. “Research has found that women negotiate higher salaries for others than they do for themselves,” he says, adding that people slip in and out of decision roles.What does the author say about people making decisions?What does the example about the physicians illustrate?When do people feel less decision fatigue?What are people likely to do when decision fatigue sets in?What does the passage say about taking some risk in decision making?

In the real world, nobody cares that you went to an Ivy League school[A] As a high school junior, everything in my life revolved around getting into the right college. I diligently attended my SAT, ACT, and Advanced Placement test preparation courses. I juggled (尽力应付)cross-country and track schedules, newspaper staff, and my church’s youth group and drama team. I didn’t drink, party, or even do much dating. The right college, I thought, was one with prestige, one with a name. It didn’t have to be the Ivy League, but it needed to be a “top school.”[B] Looking back now, nine years later, I can’t remember exactly what it was about these universities that made them seem so much better. Was it a curriculum that appeared more rigorous, perhaps? Or an alumni network that I hoped would open doors down the line? Maybe. “I do think there are advantages to schools with more recognition,” notes Marybeth Gasman, a professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania. "I don’t necessarily think that’s a reason to go to one.”[C] In reflection, my firm belief in the power of the brand was naive, not to mention a bit snobby. I quickly passed over state schools and southern schools, believing their curriculums to be automatically inferior to northeastern or western counterparts. Instead, I dreamed of living in New York City and my parents obliged me with a visit to New York University’s (NYU) campus. During the tour, tuition fees were discussed. (NYU is consistently ranked one of the country’s most expensive schools, with room and board costs totaling upwards of $64,000 a year.) Up until then, I hadn’t truly realized just how expensive an education can be. Over the next few months, I realized not only could I not afford my dream school, I couldn’t even afford the ones where I’d been accepted. City University of New York (CUNY), Rutgers University, and Indiana University were out of reach as were Mississippi State and the University of Alabama, where I would have to pay out-of- state fees. Further complicating my college search was a flourishing track career—I wanted to keep running but my times weren’t quite fast enough to secure a scholarship.[D] And so, at 11pm on the night of Georgia State University’s (GSU) midnight deadline, I applied online. Rated No. 466 overall on Forbes’ Lists Top Colleges, No. 183 in Research Universities, and No. 108 in the South, I can’t say it was my top choice. Still, the track coach had offered me a walk-on spot, and I actually found the urban Atlanta campus a decent consolation prize after New York City.[E] While it may have been practical, it wasn’t prestigious. But here’s the thing: I loved my “lower-tier” (低层次的)university. (I use the term “low-tier” cautiously, because GSU is a well-regarded research institution that attracts high quality professors and faculty from all over the country.) We are taught to believe that only by going to the best schools and getting the best grades can we escape the rat race and build a better future. But what if lower-tier colleges and universities were the ticket to escaping the rat race? After all, where else can you leave school with a decent degree—but without a lifetime of debt?[F] My school didn’t come pre-packaged like the more popular options, so we were left to take care of ourselves, figuring out city life and trying to complete degree programs that no one was championing for us to succeed in. What I’m saying is, I loved my university because it taught us all to be resourceful and we could make what we wanted out of it.[G] I was lucky enough to have my tuition covered by a lottery-funded scholarship called HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally) . When I started college, the HOPE scholarship was funded by the state of Georgia and offered to graduating high school seniors with a GPA of 3.0 or higher. Living costs and books I paid for with money earned during high school, supplemented by a small college fund my deceased grandfather left for me and a modest savings account my parents created when I was born.[H] So what about all that name recognition? Sure, many of my colleagues and competitors have more glamorous alma maters （母校）than I do. As a journalist, I have competed against NYU, Columbia, and Northeastern graduates for jobs. And yet, not a single interviewer has ever asked me about my educational background. In fact, almost every interview I’ve ever had was due to a connection—one that I’ve gained through pure determination, not a school brand.[I] According to The Boston Globe, students who earned their bachelor’s in 2012 have an average monthly loan payment of $312, which is one-third more than those who graduated in 2004. Ultimately, that's the thing universities don’t want to admit. Private universities are money-making institutions. If you can afford to buy prestige, that’s your choice. For the rest of us, however, our hearty lower-tiered universities : re just fine, thank you.[J] Wealthy universities talk up the benefits their name will give graduates: namely, strong alumni networks, star faculty, and a resume boost. But you needn’t attend an Ivy League school to reap those rewards. Ludacris and the former CEO of Bank of America Ken Lewis are alumni of my college, as well as VICE'S first female editor-in-chief, Ellis Jones. Successful people tend to be successful no matter where they go to school, and lower-tier schools can have alumni networks just as strong as their big name counterparts. In fact, lower-tier school alumni networks are arguably stronger, because fellow alumni recognize that you didn't necessarily have an easy path to follow. They might be more willing to offer career help, because your less famous school denotes that, like them, you are also full of energy and perseverance.[K] The Washington Post reported on a recent study by Princeton economists, in which college graduates who applied to the most selective schools in the 12th grade were compared to those who applied to slightly less selective schools. They found that students with more potential earned more as adults, and the reverse held true as well, no matter where they went to school.[L] Likewise, star faculty are not always found where you’d expect. Big name schools are not necessarily the best places for professors; plus, many professors split teaching time between multiple colleges and/or universities. This means, for instance, a CUNY student could reasonably expect to receive the same quality of instruction from a prestigious professor as they would if they were enrolled in the same class at NYU.[M] It’s possible that some hiring managers may be drawn to candidates with a particular educational resume, but it's no guarantee. According to a 2012 survey described in The Atlantic, college reputation ranked lowest in relative importance of attributes in evaluating graduates for hire, beaten out by top factors like internships, employment during college, college major, volunteer experience, and extracurriculars.[N] Maybe students who choose less prestigious universities are bound to succeed because they are determined to. I tend to think so. In any case, if I could do it again, I’d still make the same choice. Today I’m debt-free, resourceful—and I understand that even the shiniest packaging can’t predict what you’ll find on the inside.

When Elon Musk says that his new priority is using artificial intelligence to build domestic robots, we should look forward to the day in admiration.Mr. Musk is a guy who gets things done. The founder of two tech companies, Tesla Motors and SpaceX, is bringing electric vehicles to mass market and（） humans to live on other planets. This sounds like so much hot air, but the near $13 billion fortune this entrepreneur has （） comes from practical achievements rather than hypothetical ones.A lot of clever people are — （） about artificial intelligence, fearing that robots will one day become so （） that they'll murder all of us. These fears are mostly （） : as with hysteria about genetic modification, we humans are generally wise enough to manage these problems with speed and care.And just think of how wonderful it would be if you had a live-in robot. It could, （） be like having a babysitter and a nurse rolled into one—or, if that required （） intelligence beyond the power of Mr. Musk’s imagined machine, at least someone to chop the carrots, wash the car and mow the lawn. Once purchased and trained, this would allow the （） user to save money and time, freeing up （） space in our busy lives to read a good book.That is why we welcome Mr. Musk's latest （） , and wish him well. As long as robots add to the sum of human happiness, reduce suffering, and create time to read world-class journalism, we should be their fans. Especially since journalism is one job robots will never do.

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on the importance of building trust between employers and employees. You can cite examples to illustrate your views. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English.中国目前拥有世界上最大最快的高速铁路网。高铁列车的运行速度还将继续提升，更多的城市将修建高铁站。高铁大大缩短了人们出行的时间。相对飞机而言，高铁列车的突出优势在于准时，因为基本不受天气或交通管制的影响。高铁极大地改变了中国人的生活方式。如今，它已经成了很多人商务旅行的首选交通工具。越来越多的人也在假日乘高铁外出旅游。还有不少年轻人选择在一个城市工作而在邻近城市居住，每天乘高铁上下班。

There’re currently 21.5 million students in America, and many will be funding their college on borrowed money. Given that there’s now over $1.3 trillion in student loans on the books, it’s pretty clear that many students are far from sensible. The average student’s debt upon graduation now approaches $40,000, and as college becomes ever more expensive, calls to make it “free” are multiplying. Even Hillary Clinton says that when it comes to college, “Costs won't be a barrier.”But the only way college could be free is if the faculty and staff donated their time, the buildings required no maintenance, and campuses required no utilities. As long as it’s impossible to produce something from nothing, costs are absolutely a barrier.The actual question we debate is who should pay for people to go to college. If taxpayers are to bear the cost of forgiving student loans, shouldn't they have a say in how their money is used?At least taxpayers should be able to decide what students will study on the public dime. If we’re going to force taxpayers to foot the bill for college degrees, students should only study those subjects that’re of greatest benefit to taxpayers. After all, students making their own choices in this respect is what caused the problem in the first place. We simply don’t need more poetry, gender studies, or sociology majors. How do we know which subjects benefit society? Easy.Average starting salaries give a clear indication of what type of training society needs its new workers to have. Certainly, there’re benefits to a college major beyond the job a student can perform. But if we're talking about the benefits to society, the only thing that matters is what the major enables the student to produce for society. And the value of what the student can produce is reflected in the wage employers are willing to pay the student to produce it.A low wage for elementary school teachers, however, doesn’t mean elementary education isn’t important. It simply means there're too many elementary school teachers already.Meanwhile, there’re few who’re willing and able to perform jobs requiring a petroleum engineering major, so the value of one more of those people is very high.So we can have taxpayers pick up students’ tuition in exchange for dictating what those students will study. Or we can allow students both to choose their majors and pay for their education themselves. But in the end, one of two things is true:Either a college major is worth its cost or it isn’t. If yes, taxpayer financing isn’t needed. If not, taxpayer financing isn’t desirable. Either way, taxpayers have no business paying for students’ college education.What does the author think of college students funding their education through loans?In the author’s opinion, free college education is（） .What should students do if taxpayers are to bear their college costs?What does the author say about the value of a student’s college education?What message does the author want to convey in the passage?

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