What Books Is a Must Read to Get Into the Ivy League Schools

"Higher: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious fault. Ii hundred people tin read 2 hundred books."

So wrote John Cage, composer, teacher, and lifelong student. And he had a point. If everybody in your class reads the aforementioned volume, what hope is there of a chance see between two random texts?

Thanks to the Open Syllabus Project, yous can now access the reading lists of more than ii,500 colleges around the country. Whatever field of study yous're studying, it is at present piece of cake to diversify your reading without straying from reputable sources. Or, if you can't enroll in college correct now, create your own reading list for a bit of habitation-schooling.

Degree Query was curious what the landscape of American college books looks similar. What are the texts that are informing tomorrow'south society?

We used Open up Syllabus to identify the well-nigh commonly assigned college books in every state, overall, and in five cadre subjects: Political Science, Business, Informatics, Economics, and (of class) English Literature.

We too compared Ivy League reading lists to those of America'due south height public schools. And finally, we analyzed the gender diversity of the books in our study. Don't forget to shop indie!

Fundamental findings

The about usually assigned college book in the U.s.a. isFrankenstein pastMary Shelley.
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan is the most-assigned book inIvy League colleges, appearing in209 syllabi.
William Strunk's The Elements of Mode is the virtually-assigned volume atAmerica'south top public schools.
The nearly-assignedpiece of work of literature in American colleges isStory of an 60 minutespast Kate Chopin.
Of the 100 almost-assigned books in Us colleges,78 hadmale person authors,20 hadfemale person, andii hadmixed authors.

The most normally assigned books in US colleges, mapped

Everybody gotta write in college, and so it's no surprise that many of the virtually-assigned books in the US are author's handbooks.

Diana Hacker'sA Writer's Reference andA Pocket Style Manual appear often across the map; the former is assigned across 1,734 courses in Alabama lone.

The book with the biggest punch, though, is The American Hope: A History of the United States. It appears on 3,273 syllabi in Texas, making it the volume with the most assignations in any one country.

The book is particularly dearest of political and social history students, for whom the generous helping of illustrations and showtime-person testimony brings the story of America to life.

What are the nigh-pop college books in five different fields of study?

Next, we broke down our written report by subject.Click the pointer to scroll between maps of the most-assigned books in Political Science, Business, Calculator Science, Economics, and English Lit.

You might expect political science texts to be divided forth political lines, but tomes such as The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Social club are pop in both red and blue states. Indeed, one criticism of the volume (levied by the likes of Chomsky and Said) is that the book'due south argument is weighted towards the maintenance of an American hegemonic monoculture.

Frankenstein roams from east declension to west on literature syllabi. In fact, Mary Shelley's seminal scientific discipline-fiction horror is the most-assigned book in our whole written report, actualization on upwardly of five,000 courses. And Oedipus Male monarch may exist the oldest book to be widely studied in the States: Sophocles wrote the play well-nigh two-and-a-one-half millennia ago.

What ivy league students are reading that you aren't

In that location is a distinctly literary edge to public school book recommendations side by side to the social, political, and economical books that top the Ivy League chart. But both groups are clearly stock-still on studying human nature.

Thomas Hobbes' legendary societal critique is number one for Ivy League schools, and Joseph Conrad'due south accept on the imperialist mindset is the most-assigned unique title for top public schools.

Maybe more notable are the books that overlap. Marx's manifesto and Hardin'sTragedy of the Commons go to battle over the socio-economical responsibilities of the state and of the individual. Every bit time goes by, these archetype texts have on fresh meaning in new contexts without ever offering like shooting fish in a barrel answers. Simply cheers to the appearance of Strunk's classic writing transmission on both lists, at least the essays volition be readable.

Ivy league and meridian public colleges compared: Top book recommendations in 5 fundamental subjects

Here are the peak-assigned books across unlike subjects.Click the arrow to gyre from subject field to subject.

At that place is notably zero overlap between the books most recommended in English lit, business organization, and calculator science.

Each bunch of schools has its preferred writing guide: Strunk for public schools and the more academically oriented They Say / I Say for Ivy Leaguers. The public school list also features a volume about writing, rather than writingalmost, fiction.

Curiously, there are some exact matches in the priorities of the schools' economic science and political sciences. The two groups both favorLeviathan andThe Disharmonism of Civilizations as essential PS texts, while Adam Smith is a mainstay on economics courses.

Only 22% of America'due south well-nigh-popular college books have a female person writer

Our terminal graphic shows the gender breakdown of the 100 most-popular books in American colleges.

It is a stark visual. Only20 of the books have a sole female author, two are mixed, and the remaining78 are written past men.

Of those 22 with female person authors, around a quarter utilize to the stereotypically female person occupation of nursing. And several are more or less explicitly concerned with feminism, from Wollstonecraft's proto-feminist Vindication to Harriet Jacobs autobiography of slave life to Gilman's 'feminist gothic' short story,The Yellowish Wallpaper.

Certain, students accept plenty of reading to continue them going through the night months. Merely nothing expands the listen like an unexpected passage in a privately discovered book.

Whether you're a pupil looking to boost your official reading list or an autodidact looking for management, there's plenty of food for idea in this challenging collection of frequently assigned college books.

METHODOLOGY & SOURCES

Nosotros used theOpen Syllabus Explorer to find out the most-pop book in every state by discipline and the top 100 nearly-popular books nationwide.

To determine the almost-popular books at Ivy League schools and public schools, nosotros aggregated the ranks of the tiptop 100 books at each Ivy League school and the meridian 8 schools on the listing of the 2021 Tiptop Public Schools of the U.Southward. News & World Report.

For the full research behind this study, visit bit.ly/AmericanSyllabus.

This article commencement appeared on Degreequery.com.