【正文】 t’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 peted 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 worldfamous 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 wellknown.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 AngloSaxon, 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.Passage2Andy Did you see the film on television last night?Jane No, I was out. What was it?Andy A Beautiful Mind. It’s about John Forbes Nash, the mathematician who won the Nobel Prize.Jane I’ve heard about that film, yes. He’s played by Russell Crowe, isn’t he? I like Russell Crowe, he’s great.Andy That’s the one, yes.Jane What’s it about?Andy Well, the story begins in the early years of Nash’s life at Princeton University as a graduate student.Jane That’s one of the Ivy League schools, isn’t it?Andy Yes, it’s all set in New England, lovely old buildings, beautiful autumn colours. It’s lovely to look at. Anyway, Nash meets his roommate Charles, a literature student, who soon bees his best friend. Nash admits to Charles that he is better with numbers than people, and the main thing he’s looking for is a truly original idea for his thesis paper.Jane So he’s not interested in having fun?Andy Well, yes, but he’s not very good with people or successful with women, that’s all. But, you know, it’s one of these bad experiences with people which ultimately inspires his brilliant work in mathematics.Jane No good at relationships, so he bees a genius at maths?Andy That’s about right, yes. So when he finishes his studies at Princeton, he accepts a job at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Five years later, he meets Alicia, a student who he falls in love with and eventually marries.Jane Ah! At last, the love interest!Andy Yes, but wait a moment. Nash believes that he’s been asked to work by William Parcher for the US Department of Defense on breaking Soviet codes. At one point he’s chased by the Russians, and it’s after this that he bees mentally ill.Jane I think I’ve seen this in the trailer to the film.Andy So when he’s put in a psychiatric hospital, he thinks the Soviets have captured him. He’s given this painful treatment which affects his relationship with his wife. And his intellectual skills. So he stops taking the medicine.Jane It sounds quite hard to watch.Andy Well, it is, but it’s well acted and directed, and so, you know, there’s abit of distance between the audience and what’s happening on film.Jane So what happens next?Andy Well, then his illness returns, so he and his wife decide to try and live with it. It all gets a bit plicated, because we’re no longer sure if Charles, you know, his old friend, or even Parcher were real, or if they were just people that existed only in Nash’s mind.Jane That sounds awful. He must have been so ill,Andy Actually, I’m kind of giving away the twist in the story. Anyway, later in his life, while he’s using the library at Princeton again, he asks his rival Martin Hansen if he can start teaching again. And so the story ends when he goes on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.Jane Well, it sounds like a great film.Andy Yes, you should see it sometime.Unit 2 Food, glorious food! Inside viewConversation 1