What Ivy Leaguers are reading that you aren’t

If you want an Ivy League education, you could fork over $200 grand or so and go to Cornell or Harvard for four years. Alternatively, you could save a ton of cash by simply reading the same books Ivy League students are assigned.

That became easier recently with the release of the Open Syllabus Explorer, an online database of books assigned in over 1 million college courses over the past decade or so.

As the group behind the project explains: There's an "intellectual judgment embedded" in the lists of books college students are required to read. The most frequently assigned books at the nation's universities are essentially our canon: the body of literature that society's leaders are expected to be familiar with. So what does that canon look like?

For starters, the Explorer lets us filter by individual schools. I tallied the most frequently assigned books at all U.S. colleges and universities and compared them to the list at seven Ivy League schools — Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, U. Penn and Brown (Dartmouth doesn't seem to appear in the Explorer's database.

Across all schools, Strunk & White's

The Elements of classic writing guide

Style

is the most common book, assigned in over 3,000 courses in the Explorer's

Plato's Republic database. is the secondmost popular, appearing close to 2,500

Campbell Biology times. The 1,500-page textbook/doorstop comes in at third place, perhaps a nod to the nation's premed students.

Appearing fourth on the list, Marx

The Communist Manifesto and Engels' is sure to raise some eyebrows. Its popularity makes a certain amount of sense, given that it may be the most wellknown critique of the capitalist system we all know and love. But that's not likely to comfort anyone who's convinced the nation's universities are breeding grounds for bearded Marxist extremism.

The Ivy League list is considerably

Republic different, however. Plato's is the top book there, with Samuel Clash of Civilizations Huntington's coming in a close second. The Elements Style makes an appearance, as do poli-sci Leviathan The Prince. classics and Letter From a Martin Luther King's Birmingham Jail comes it at No. 8 in the Ivy Leagues.

Overall, the Ivy League list is heavily skewed toward political philosophy and thought — the only book on the list that doesn't fall under this category is Strunk Elements of Style. and White's The Explorer lets you filter by subject area, too.

There's a little more agreement among English courses, with five books in common across the two lists. The No. 1 work of fiction taught at American schools is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein.

At the Ivies, on the other Canterbury Tales hand, Chaucer's are No. 1 (raise your hand if you still bear psychological scars for having to memorize Middle English verse during your formative years).

Paradise Lost Milton's is universally Heart of assigned, as are Conrad's Darkness Hamlet. and Shakespeare's