<p>Alright, somebody tipped me off that I should consider getting my textbooks at this time. I figured out the UCLA bookstore thing, where I can enter my student ID and plop out a list of books. </p>
<p>If I do buy from UCLA bookstore, then are the books picked up upon getting to UCLA, or are they mailed? Is it charged onto my BAR>?</p>
<p>I also understand that I can buy my own books via other sources. Is this recommended for my first year, and are there any places to get it?></p>
<p>After I am done with my books, is there some kind of forum or market where I can sell the books again?</p>
<p>And one last thing, in the summary of the cost of school, there is a section for books. It usually comes out to be some arbitrary number around $1000. There cant be a fixed cost for books, right? Im assuming thats just an average?</p>
did you always get your books before quarter start for the past quarters?
from my experience you won’t really NEED your books until 2nd week (generally when the homework will be assigned and so on but theres always copies on reserve in powell) sometimes you are better off not buying books before the first day because there are some classes you don’t really need the book (like scerri’s chem class, physics 1 series if you can get your hands on digital copy) so 8-10 days is totally fine and i wouldn’t be worried as long as they don’t list it as 1 month+ shipping
for first years i think you’ll be better off buying used books from other people because the lower div course books are easy to get your hands on, my general way of book searching is facebook marketplace, then half.com then amazon (which are generally around the same price as ucla store and ucla store can price match)
unfortunately later on it’ll be harder (such as my civil engineering upper div books) as not that many people take the class and offered once a year, did some search and looks like i’ll have to buy from ucla store this quarter :(</p>
<p>What you could try to pull off, at your own risk, is to buy the books from the bookstore and then return them within the first 2 weeks of classes for a full refund when your shipment arrives.</p>
<p>Please note that this won’t work with books that are shrink wrapped since you can’t return them if you open the shrink wrap.</p>
<p>I saw 4-8 weeks on Barnes and Nobles website for one of the books I was getting. I’ve also heard of some books coming Internationally on a ship rather than airmail.</p>
<p>But amazon (or whatever place online) doesn’t charge sales tax. So even if you bring a printout of the amazon record into ackerman to do a “price match”, then I’d figure ackerman would charge sales tax. So in the end–online sales should always be cheaper, even considering the bookstore’s “price match.” (Except in the case that kick53 mentioned.)</p>
<p>Yes, that’s correct; you can use price match with Amazon (the official store), as long as the product in “in stock,” but not with independent, 3rd party retailers on Amazon.</p>
<p>also, try browsing the books section on bruinwalk (the website). you can get stuff pretty cheap there, and you don’t have to worry about shipping time.</p>
