被名校阻止在校门外的名人们双语阅读：
没有什么比春季收到大学拒绝信更让十几岁的年轻人感到恐惧了。由于今年秋季美国大学新生班预计将容纳创纪录的290万名学生，数十万申请者将很快会收到这种恐怖的信件。

Few events arouse more teenage angst than the springtime arrival of college rejection letters. With next fall's college freshman class expected to approach a record 2.9 million students, hundreds of thousands of applicants will soon be receiving the dreaded letters.

这些被拒绝的年轻人可不缺好伙伴。包括诺贝尔奖获得者、亿万富翁慈善家、大学校长、研究机构的学者、畅销书作家及商业、媒体和艺术界的领袖在内的许多人均曾收到大学或研究生院的拒绝信。

Teenagers who face rejection will be joining good company, including Nobel laureates, billionaire philanthropists, university presidents, constitutional scholars, best-selling authors and other leaders of business, media and the arts who once received college or graduate-school rejection letters of their own.

巴菲特(Warren Buffett)和《今天》(Today)节目的主持人维埃拉(Meredith Vieira)均表示，尽管被理想中的学校拒绝令人沮丧，但却为他们打开了另一扇门，让他们遇到了改变自己一生的良师益友。诺贝尔医学奖获得者瓦慕斯(Harold Varmus)说曾被哈佛医学院拒绝了两次，一名院长还建议他去参军。但当他在哥伦比亚大学医学院全身心地投入学习之后，他很快就忘记了这一切。对于从Sun电子计算机公司（Sun Microsystems，又名：升阳电脑)的共同创始人麦克尼利(Scott McNealy)和企业家特纳(Ted Turner)到电视记者布罗考(Tom Brokaw)等其他曾被大学拒绝的人而言，这只是他们仍然记得并将会谈起的一段无足轻重的往事。

Both Warren Buffett and 'Today' show host Meredith Vieira say that while being rejected by the school of their dreams was devastating, it launched them on a path to meeting life-changing mentors. Harold Varmus, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, says getting rejected twice by Harvard Medical School, where a dean advised him to enlist in the military, was soon forgotten as he plunged into his studies at Columbia University's med school. For other college rejects, from Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy and entrepreneur Ted Turner to broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw, the turndowns were minor footnotes, just ones they still remember and will talk about.

拒绝是再平常不过的事情。哈佛大学每年收到29,000封大学本科申请，录取率仅略高于7%，斯坦福大学的录取率与之大致相同。

Rejections aren't uncommon. Harvard accepts only a little more than 7% of the 29,000 undergraduate applications it receives each year, and Stanford's acceptance rate is about the same.

巴菲特说，事实上我生命中发生的每一件当时认为是毁灭性的事件最终证明都在朝好的方向发展。他说，除健康问题外，挫折教会你如何向前走。你了解到暂时的挫败不能持久，最终它可能会成为一个机会。

'The truth is, everything that has happened in my life . . . that I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned out for the better,' Mr. Buffett says. With the exception of health problems, he says, setbacks teach 'lessons that carry you along. You learn that a temporary defeat is not a permanent one. In the end, it can be an opportunity.'