How do you guys think college textbooks will cost pre-semester?
Per semester? It really depends on your school, and definitely on your major. Where I am, new science textbooks can be very expensive (~$100-200 a semester each); math are ~$50 each. Haven’t taken many humanities classes, so I can’t speak about that.
Instead of purchasing textbooks, you should look into 1. Online PDFs of the textbooks; 2. Buying or renting textbooks from your peers (my school has a Facebook page for textbook exchanges); and 3. Buying or renting textbooks from a site like bigwords or Amazon. Avoid Barnes and Noble if you can. It can be difficult because some professors insist you buy a new edition of a textbook or accompanying software.
Doing that, I’ve only had to spend ~$100/semester taking ~2 science classes, and ~$30-50 taking no science classes. Some semesters, I’ve gotten away with not spending anything.
You’re better off waiting until the first day of class to get the scoop from the professors on what is actually required.
It all depends on the course and college. If you want to ask your seniors which are in the same course.
You may also be able to rent from your college’s own bookstore. My D has done this.
It honestly depends. My most expensive textbook cost a week’s paycheck (and we never use it in class), but this semester all my textbooks came to about $90. I recommend going to the first classes in add/drop to see how much you need the textbooks. I find that I don’t need the books to do well in the class, but I still have to buy them because my professors do online quizzes based off the book.
Look into renting through Amazon and your campus bookstore and definitely see if the bookstore price-matches.
Another option that many profs use is putting the books on reserve at the library (but this requires you to have the discipline to actually go to the library to read them)
My school gave us an estimate of about $750-$1000. I paid under $200 because I either bought extremely used versions of the textbooks or I rented them. However, I did not need access codes for any of my courses. Some classes require those and typically you need to buy them new because they are a one-time use thing.
You can buy new, buy used, rent or sometimes rent used.
Make sure you have the edition that the professor wants