曾被名校拒之門外的名人們

【英文原文】

Before They Were Titans, Moguls and Newsmakers, These People cted
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.

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.

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.

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.

'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.'

Mr. Buffett regards his rejection at age 19 by Harvard Business School as a pivotal episode in his life. Looking back, he says Harvard wouldn't have been a good fit. But at the time, he 'had this feeling of dread' after being rejected in an admissions interview in Chicago, and a fear of disappointing his father.

As it turned out, his father responded with 'only this unconditional love . . . an unconditional belief in me,' Mr. Buffett says. Exploring other options, he realized that two investing experts he admired, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, were teaching at Columbia's graduate business school. He dashed off a late application, where by a stroke of luck it was fielded and accepted by Mr. Dodd. From these mentors, Mr. Buffett says he learned core principles that guided his investing. The Harvard rejection also benefited his alma mater; he gave more than $12 million to Columbia in 2008 through the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, based on tax filings.

The lesson of negatives becoming positives has proven true repeatedly, Mr. Buffett says. He was terrified of public speaking -- so much so that when he was young he sometimes threw up before giving an address. So he enrolled in a Dale Carnegie public speaking course and says the skills he learned there enabled him to woo his future wife, Susan Thompson, a 'champion debater,' he says. 'I even proposed to my wife during the course,' he says. 'If I had been only a mediocre speaker I might not have taken it.'

Dr. Varmus, the Nobel laureate and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, was daunted by the first of his two turndowns by Harvard's med school. He enrolled instead in grad studies in literature at Harvard, but was uninspired by thoughts of a career in that field.

After a year, he applied again to Harvard's med school and was rejected, by a dean who chastised him in an interview for being 'inconstant and immature' and advised him to enlist in the military. Officials at Columbia's medical school, however, seemed to value his 'competence in two cultures,' science and literature, he says.

If rejected by the school you love, Dr. Varmus advises in an email, immerse yourself in life at a college that welcomes you. 'The differences between colleges that seem so important before you get there will seem a lot less important once you arrive at one that offered you a place.'

Rejected once, and then again, by business schools at Stanford and Harvard, Scott McNealy practiced the perseverance that would characterize his career. A brash economics graduate of Harvard, he was annoyed that 'they wouldn't take a chance on me right out of college,' he says. He kept trying, taking a job as a plant foreman for a manufacturer and working his way up in sales. 'By my third year out of school, it was clear I was going to be a successful executive. I blew the doors off my numbers,' he says. Granted admission to Stanford's business school, he met Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla and went on to head Sun for 22 years.

【中文譯文】

沒有什麼比春季收到大學拒絕信更讓十幾歲的年輕人感到恐懼了。由於今年秋季美國大學新生班預計將容納創紀錄的290萬名學生，數十萬申請者將很快會收到這種恐怖的信件。

這些被拒絕的年輕人可不缺好夥伴。包括諾貝爾獎獲得者、億萬富翁慈善家、大學校長、研究機構的學者、暢銷書作家及商業、媒體和藝術界的領袖在內的許多人均曾收到大學或研究生院的拒絕信。

巴菲特(Warren Buffett)和《今天》(Today)節目的主持人維埃拉(Meredith Vieira)均表示，儘管被理想中的學校拒絕令人沮喪，但卻爲他們打開了另一扇門，讓他們遇到了改變自己一生的良師益友。諾貝爾醫學獎獲得者瓦慕斯(Harold Varmus)說曾被哈佛醫學院拒絕了兩次，一名院長還建議他去參軍。但當他在哥倫比亞大學醫學院全身心地投入學習之後，他很快就忘記了這一切。對於從Sun電子計算機公司（Sun Microsystems，又名：昇陽電腦)的共同創始人麥克尼利(Scott McNealy)和企業家特納(Ted Turner)到電視記者布羅考(Tom Brokaw)等其他曾被大學拒絕的人而言，這只是他們仍然記得並將會談起的一段無足輕重的往事。

拒絕是再平常不過的事情。哈佛大學每年收到29,000封大學本科申請，錄取率僅略高於7%，斯坦福大學的錄取率與之大致相同。

Bloomberg News; Buffett family photo; Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street Journal; Baker City High School
曾被名校拒之門外的名人巴菲特說，事實上我生命中發生的每一件當時認爲是毀滅性的事件最終證明都在朝好的方向發展。他說，除健康問題外，挫折教會你如何向前走。你瞭解到暫時的挫敗不能持久，最終它可能會成爲一個機會。

巴菲特認爲他19歲被哈佛商學院拒絕是人生中一段關鍵的經歷。他說，回首過去，哈佛可能並不一定適合他。但當時，在芝加哥的哈佛入學面試中被拒絕之後，他有了一種恐懼的感覺，並害怕會讓他的父親失望。

巴菲特說，最終他的父親給了他無條件的愛和無條件的信心。在尋找其它大學的過程中，他意識到格雷厄姆(Benjamin Graham)和多德(David Dodd)這兩位他所欽佩的投資專家當時正在哥倫比亞大學的商學院教書。他匆忙完成了一份遲到的申請，出於運氣，多德回覆並接受了他的申請。巴菲特說他從這些導師那裏學到了指導他進行投資的核心原理。哈佛的拒絕也讓他的母校獲益良多；基於稅務文件，2008年他通過巴菲特基金會(Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation)向哥倫比亞大學捐款達1200萬美元以上。

巴菲特說他多次體會到“塞翁失馬，焉知非福”的道理。他害怕發表演講，以至於年輕時他有時會在演講前嘔吐。所以他參加了一期迪爾•卡內基（Dale Carnegie）的公開演講課程。他說他在那兒學到的技巧讓他能夠向他未來的妻子蘇珊•湯普森求愛。他說自己的太太是一位“冠軍辯手”。他說，我在上課期間便向我的太太求婚了。如果我只是一名普普通通的演講者，我可能不會成功。

諾貝爾獎得主、紐約斯隆-凱特琳癌症中心(Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center)總裁瓦慕斯醫生曾兩次被哈佛醫學院拒絕。第一次被拒時，他感到沮喪。他更改了自己的申請，註冊了哈佛的文學研究生課程，但一想到要從事這個領域的工作就提不起興趣。

一年後，他再次申請哈佛醫學院，又被拒絕。在面試時，一名院長認爲他變化無常且不成熟，並建議他去參軍。他說，但是哥倫比亞大學醫學院的職員看來欣賞他在科學和文學兩個領域的能力。

瓦慕斯在電子郵件中建議，如果你被自己喜愛的學校拒絕，便在歡迎你的大學裏埋頭苦幹。在你進大學之前，兩所學校之間的差別看起來如此重要。而一旦你進入那個爲你提供了一席之地的學校，這種差別就顯得非常不重要了。

麥克尼利被斯坦福大學和哈佛大學的商學院拒絕了不止一次。他所表現出的執着正是他事業的寫照。他說他那時是一名莽撞的哈佛大學經濟學本科畢業生，對一出校門學校就不肯再給他一次機會感到氣憤。他一邊工作一邊不斷地努力申請。他做過製造廠的車間領班，並在銷售領域不斷地成長。他說，在離開學校三年後，很顯然我將成爲一個成功的管理人員，遠勝過我的同輩。被斯坦福商學院錄取後，他遇到了Sun Microsystems的另一位共同創始人科斯拉(Vinod Khosla)，之後他領導Sun Microsystems走過了22年的歷程。