<p>Where is the cheapest place to buy textbooks? The prices at the Penn bookstore don't look too horrible, but perhaps there is somewhere cheaper?</p>
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Either prices have shot down since I last bought textbooks or you are very rich.</p>
<p>Better Than The Bookstore is a decent place to get books. It’s run so Penn students sell their books to other Penn students. Pickup and dropoff are at a small bookstore/house on Spruce.</p>
<p>You can also find most of the non-Penn-specific books on Amazon, eBay, or any of those other sites.</p>
<p>When do you recommend we buy textbooks for the fall? Now, or closer to NSO?</p>
<p>Start looking at textbooks now. I wouldn’t buy any yet unless you are 100% sure you’re taking the course (ex. Mgmt 100 for Wharton or Math for SEAS). There is a chance you can drop any course for whatever reason so you don’t want to be stuck with a $200 book that you can’t return to the bookstore (there are some books you cannot return after you purchase them regardless of shrink wrap). There are also some professors who tell you that you do not need to purchase the book.</p>
<p>Buying from half.com or amazon.com saves me at 200-300 dollars a semester.</p>
<p>Venkat89, I don’t know if this is because I got lucky with classes or what, but when I checked the Penn bookstore, my total came out to be less than $300. Which seemed reasonable to me, but again I have no experience buying textbooks.</p>
<p>WAIT why the ****** does a math txt book cost $200?!?!?</p>
<p>math is one of the few textbooks you’ll want to keep for life and math is a universal course (taken by pretty much all undergrads) so demand is high and utility is high.</p>
<p>Weird, my math book only turned out to be $86.65.</p>
<p>I highly recommend abebooks.com, where you can get international editions of some books which are exactly the same as the US edition, except softcover and cheaper. Some intl editions suck because they are black and white, but the “quality” intl editions, which are on color and exactly the same as the US edition, can save you hundreds of dollars.</p>
<p>i used valorebooks for high school. they were a few bucks cheaper than amazon. plus i went to retailmenot (great site for online retailers by the way if you’ve never heard of it. basically a coupon site) and you get 5% off if you plug in 5peroff when you check out.</p>
<p>Use the campusexpress web site to find out which specific book you need and then search around on the web for the books. Only buy “required” texts, and even then, only buy the book if your professor absolutely requires it. It’s certainly safe to wait in most courses until the 2nd week or so to get the books, with the exception of maybe math classes where you’ll have problem sets ASAP.</p>