Comparison between our composite spectrum of UV-bright galaxies (black) and that of typical ($L_{\mathrm{UV}}^{\ast }$) Lyman break galaxies at z ∼ 3 from Shapley et al. (2003) (red). Measurements of the EW₀ (He II) for both composites are shown in the caption. The region near the He IIλ1640 emission profile is normalized with a different normalization factor to match the level of the continuum. The measured EW₀ (He II) for the composite of UV bright galaxies in this work is 3.19 ± 0.07 Å while for the Shapley composite is 1.37 Å.