To prepare for the MAT, you need to familiarize yourself with literary works and famous authors — the stuff that a college English major has to read. Here are important literary works that may appear on the MAT.

  • Appearance and Reality: By British idealist Francis Herbert Bradley

  • An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: By John Locke. Asserts that the mind is a blank slate at birth

  • The Art of War: Ancient Chinese book by Sun Tzu about military strategy

  • Beyond Good and Evil: By Nietzsche; criticizes past philosophers on their acceptance of religious principles

  • Candide: French satire by Voltaire

  • The Communist Manifesto: Political manuscript by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

  • Critique of Pure Reason: Influential work by Kant in which he describes the relationship between knowledge and experience

  • Leviathan: By Thomas Hobbes. Focuses on society and government

  • Poetics: An analysis of tragedy by Aristotle

  • The Prince: Political work by Machiavelli where he asserts that the truth is more important than an ideal

  • The Republic: A Socratic dialogue by Plato

  • The Social Contract: By Rousseau; focuses on political community

  • The World as Will and Representation: Primary work of Schopenhauer; he writes that all of nature has a will to life and that suffering comes from the desire for more

  • Utopia: Fiction and political philosophy by Thomas More

About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book authors:

Vince Kotchian is a full-time standardized test tutor specializing in the MAT, SSAT, ISEE, ACT, GRE, and GMAT. He teaches a GRE prep course at the University of California, San Diego, and has an extensive understanding of analogies and the MAT.

Edwin Kotchian is a MAT tutor and freelance writer who has contributed to a variety of test-prep material.

This article can be found in the category: