Section B
Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked [A], [B], [C] and [D]. You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the center.
Passage One
Questions 57 to 61 are based on the following passage.
You’re busy filling out the application form for a position you really need. Let’s assume you once actually completed a couple of years of college work or even that you completed your degree. Isn’t it tempting to lie just a little, to claim on the form that your diploma represents a Harvard degree? Or that you finished an extra couple of years back at State University? More and more people are turning to utter deception like this to land their job or to move ahead in their careers, for personnel officers, like most Americans, value degrees from famous schools. A job applicant may have a good education anyway, but he or she assumes that chances of being hired are better with a diploma from a well-known university.
Registrars at most well-known colleges say they deal with deceitful claims like these at the rate of about one per week. Personnel officers do check up on degrees listed on application forms, then. If it turns out that an applicant is lying, most colleges are reluctant to accuse the applicant directly. One Ivy League school calls them "impostors(骗子)"; another refers to them as "special cases". One well-known West Coast school, in perhaps the most delicate phrase of all, says that these claims are made by "no such people". To avoid outright(彻底的)lies, some job-seekers claim that they "attending" means being dismissed after one semester. It may be that "being associated with" a college means that the job-seeker visited his younger brother for a football weekend. One school that keeps records of false claims says that the practice dates back at least to the turn of the century—that’s when they began keeping records, anyhow. If you don’t want to lie or even stretch the truth, there are companies that will sell you a phony diploma.
One company, with offices in New York and on the West Coast, will put your name on a diploma from any number of nonexistent colleges. The price begins at around twenty dollars for a diploma from "Smoot State University". The prices increase rapidly for a degree from the "University of Purdue". As there is no Smoot State and the real school in Indiana is properly called Purdue University, the prices seem rather high for one sheet of paper.
57. The main idea of this passage is that ________ .
[A] employers are checking more closely on applicants now
[B] lying about college degrees has become a widespread problem
[C] college degrees can now be purchased easily
[D] employers are no longer interested in college degrees
58. According to the passage, "special cases" refers to cases that ________.
[A] students attend a school only part-time
[B] students never attended a school they listed on their application
[C] students purchase false degrees from commercial firms
[D] students attended a famous school采集者退散
59. We can infer from the passage that ________ .
[A] performance is a better judge of ability than a college degree
[B] experience is the best teacher
[C] past work histories influence personnel officers more than degrees do
[D] a degree from a famous school enables an applicant to gain advantage over others in job competition
60. This passage implies that ________ .
[A] buying a false degree is not moral
[B] personnel officers only consider applicants from famous schools
[C] most people lie on applications because they were dismissed from school
[D] society should be greatly responsible for lying on applications
61. The word "phony" (Line 13, Para. 2) means ________ .
[A] thorough [C] false
[B] ultimate [D] decisive