新标准大学英语-视听说教程第一册Listening-in听力原文

新标准大学英语-视听说教程第一册Listening-in听力原文

Unit 1 Starting out

Listening in

Passage 1

Interviewer Can you tell me something about the Ivy League? You're a professor at Harvard, is that right? Professor That's right, yes.

Interviewer Tell me how many universities are there? How many institutions?

Professor In total there are eight institutions: There's Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Interviewer Ah, OK. And what's the sporting ... I believe there's some link with sports.

Professor There certainly is, yes. Originally the Ivy League referred to the sports teams from the universities which competed against each other, especially in football, basketball and ice hockey. Now sometimes these universities, institutions, chose their students on the basis of their skills at these particular sports. But in the last 50 years, Ivy League schools have accepted a wider range of students because it wasn't possible to be both world-famous for research and also top class in sport.

Interviewer And what about their academic importance? I gather they're academically very, very important, they're very well-known.

Professor Absolutely at the top. They're near or at the top of the USA colleges and university rankings. And they're almost always in the top one per cent of the world's academic institutions for financial resources. Interviewer And what does it mean socially to go to an Ivy League university?

Professor Certainly if you've been to one of these institutions, you are presumed or assumed to be at the top end of the scale. The Ivy League institutions have a reputation for social elitism, many of the students are rich, intellectual, white Anglo-Saxon, protestants. Not all of them of course, but quite a lot of them. Interviewer And do you know ... why's it called the Ivy League, what's the origin of the name?

Professor There are a number of stories, derivations, but possibly it's based on four universities, and IV, the letters IV, that's the Roman numeral for four. Another more likely story is that ivy plants, which are symbolic of the age of the universities, you know, would be grown at the walls of these universities, these institutions, they cover the walls of the buildings. The term was created by a sports journalist, I think in the 1930s.

Interviewer Right, OK. And which is the oldest university?

Professor The oldest goes back to the 17th century, that's Harvard which was founded in 1636. And the youngest of the institutions is Cornell which was founded in 1865.

Interviewer And which has the largest number of undergraduates?

Professor Cornell has the largest number, about 13,000, 13,500 undergraduates. The institution with the smallest number is Dartmouth College with a little over 4,000.

Interviewer And what about the acceptance rate? Is it hard to get into?

Professor That ranges from about seven per cent to 20 per cent.

Interviewer And any famous alumni? Famous old boys?

Professor Hundreds! Hundreds of them. But I suppose worldwide, the two that would be definitely known all over the world would certainly be George Bush who went to Yale, and John F Kennedy, President Kennedy, who was at Harvard.

Interviewer Thank you.

Passage2

Andy Did you see the film on television last night?