The Exceptional Applicant
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Campus Visit Questions
You’re in…Now what do you do?
If you want to be on a similar wavelength and have a similar lexicon as your classmates and professors, here’s a list of books you should kick back and read this summer:
Recommended Reading List
• Silent Spring by Rachel Caron (environmental)
• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, and Maus by Art Spiegelman (graphic novels on different social and political combustible issues)
• Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
• The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson (clever and irreverent wit that makes you smile)
• Anil’s Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje
• A Chronicle of a Death Foretold and 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Honor Code, Kwame Anthony Appiah
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
• Abundance, Peter Diamandis
• Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lesson for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
• Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Thinking Fast and Slow and Noise by Daniel Kahneman
• The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, by Richard Feynmann
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley.
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (protest literature)
• The Dew Braker by Edwidge Danticat
• Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
• The Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris
• Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse,
• Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• The Future of Humanity, by Michio Kaku
• Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
• Linchpin by Seth Godin
• The Future of Humanity by Michiu Kaku
• Why Trust Science by Naomi Oreskes
• The Art of the Good Life, by Rolf Dobelli
• The Prince and Other Writings, Niccolo Machiavelli
• (Play) Our Town, Thornton Wilder
• (Play) A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
• (play) Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
• (play) The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams
• (play) Waiting for Godot (an example of Theater of the Absurd), Samuel Beckett
• (play) A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
• (play) The Crucible by Arthur Miller
• (play) Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• (play) King Lear by William Shakespeare
• Old Man and the Sea and All Quiet on the Western Front by Earnest Hemingway
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• A Guide to the Good Life (the ancient art of stoic joy) by William B. Irvine
• Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
You’ve got time now, and if you’re looking for a way to spend it, you could do worse than with the fascinating works I’m suggesting here.
Don’t forget to let us know about other books that are must-reads!
What to Watch & What to Do
Now, what else might you enjoy watching and doing that your equally worldly and educated classmates might reference?:
FILMS:
Casablanca
Dr. No – James Bond
The Way We Were
The Godfather Trilogy
Citizen Kane
On the Waterfront
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Roman Holiday
Singin’ in the Rain
An American in Paris
Sophie’s Choice
Schindler’s List
Hidden Figures
Cinema Paradiso
Life is Beautiful
12 Angry Men
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Sound of Music
A Streetcar Named Desire
Some Like It Hot
North by Northwest
Apocalypse Now
A Star is Born
Buena Vista Social Club
Hamilton
The Right Stuff
ON BROADWAY (If you are in town and get the chance)
Westside Story
Fiddler on the Roof
Company, Sondheim
Candide, Bernstein
Once on This Island
Carousel
My Fair Lady
Phantom of the Opera
Don Quixote
TV
Madmen
The Crown
Downton Abby
The 1966 Series: Mission Impossible
I Love Lucy
Seinfeld
The Office, 2005 with Steve Carrell
VEEP
West Wing
House
Succession
Boardwalk Empire
The Sopranos
Breaking Bad
Better Call Saul
Ted Lasso
The Hand Maid’s Tale
Band of Brothers
House of Cards
Gaslit
Mind Hunter
Chernobyl
Homeland
In the Kitchen!
Exchange recipes with friends of different cultural backgrounds and then make those recipes together!