An lnterview with the President of Yale University（在线收听）

Journalist: What qualities does a university require when ¹⁾enrolling students and what changes when they leave school?

Richard: That’s a good one. The students coming into Yale, of course they have to show a high-level of academic achievement with a series of tests that students take, the SAT tests and some of the achievement tests that go along with it. But then they’re also expected to have very excellent grades in their secondary school, in their high school education and then also show some potential for leadership, and that’s very hard to assess. It’s certainly not to mean an assess just from one’s academic performance so we look at...

Journalist: You have face to face interviews.

Richard: There are still those, but frankly those can be ²⁾deceptive. I think we look more to the record of what students have done in their ³⁾extracurricular activities. Have they done something unusual? Have they founded a new organization or led are they active in volunteer service in their ⁴⁾communities, or have they been excellent ⁵⁾athletes and perhaps elected captain of their team and shown leadership skill in that way? So through a variety of ⁶⁾mechanisms, we try to ⁷⁾ascertain the potential for leadership. The other thing that’s important is, we actually expect to have students who have made enough of an impression on their teachers and other adults that they, that the letters, we ask for letters of recommendation, and that these letters don’t just say that, “This is the brightest student I’ve had in five years” but actually say something of the character of the individual. And the most effective letters of recommendation are those that really do try to describe the person and give a sense that this is really someone who has great potential. It’s all very ⁸⁾forward looking you try to pick the people who will end up being leaders and I you know, we are fortunate to have a very good record.

Journalist: As more and more young people want to get into Yale, does the ⁹⁾criteria for enrollment become more and more critical?

Richard: Well, the criteria won’t change but the ¹⁰⁾threshold, the level of achievement has gone up and it’s remarkable today right now we have about seven or eight applications for everyone we admit and already there are many who don”t apply, because they know they don”t have a chance to come, so we have a very strong pool of applicants, but that said we’re very eager to expand that pool internationally. One of the things that’s most important to me is to make Yale a truly global institution. It started as very local ¹¹⁾Connecticut, that grew to a national institution, but I think in our fourth century which is coming up, we would like to be a truly global institution and get the very best students from around the world.

Journalist: Any comments on the Chinese students in Yale?

Richard: Oh, we have ¹²⁾fabulous Chinese students. I mean these Chinese students are so you know I think the kind of extreme creativity and imagination that we like to see in our students. We’ve seen in my department in economics, we’ve seen some really excellent students in the graduate level. We have now over 300 students from China at Yale, most of them now in graduate programs. Mostly Ph.D. programs, but some of the other professions law and music especially, architecture. We would like to see more at the undergraduate level and but we’re very pleased with the ones we have. CE

09、采访耶鲁大学校长

记者∶大学的招生条件是什么？那和学生的毕业条件有什么不同？

理查德∶问得好。要念耶鲁的学生，当然考试成绩必须要好，像英语水平测试还有别的要进行的一些考试等等。同时他们的中学学业成绩要好，要有领导天分——那是很难评判的。当然了，我们不会光从表面成绩来下结论……

记者：你们还有面试。

理查德：面试是有，但老实说，面试可以弄虚作假。我们更多的是去看这学生在课外活动的表现。他们是否做过什么不同寻常的事？他们是否成立过新组织或者在社区的义务工作中起带领作用或表现积极，他们是否是优秀的运动员或是被选过为队长，或在这方面表现出过领导才能？所以我们是在通过各种途径确定有没有领导潜质。另一点也很重要，就是我们其实希望学生给他们的教师或别的成人留下深刻印象，由他们写信过来，我们需要看到推荐信，而且这些信上写的不是什么“这是我五年中教过的最聪明的学生”诸如此类的话，而是言之有物地描述出个人特点。真正地描述出了被推荐人、表明此人真正具有优秀潜质的推荐信才是最好的。努力地挑选出今后的领袖人才，这种做法是很有远见的，而且我认为你也知道，幸运的是我们在这方面保持了良好的记录。

记者：随着越来越多的青年人希望进耶鲁就读，招生的标准是否也变得越来越苛刻了？

理查德：标准没变，但门槛提高了，分数线在上升，值得注意的是我们现在有七、八名学生在竞争同一个名额，还有很多的人甚至不申请，因为他们知道自己毫无被录取的可能，所以说我们的申请人济济，可我们非常希望能把申请人的范围向全球扩展。我的重要职责之一就是力争把耶鲁真正地变成一个全球性机构。耶鲁在康涅狄格创建，然后成长为全国性大学，但我想我们的第四纪即将来临，我们希望成为一个真正的全球性大学，从世界各地吸收最优秀的学生。

记者：你怎样评价在耶鲁的中国留学生呢？

理查德∶噢，耶鲁有非常优秀的中国学生。我是说，我认为中国学生非常富有创造力和想象力，那正是我们希望学生所具有的。我们在我的经济系里见到过，在研究生中也见到过非常优秀的学生。如今我们在耶鲁有三百多名中国留学生，其中大多数是念研究生课程。也有很多在念博士后，有的念法律、音乐，尤其是建筑。我们希望将来见到更多来念本科课程的，不过能得到像现在这样好的学生我们也非常高兴。CE