<p>This question is for current college students: How much do you typically spend on textbooks per semester?</p>
<p>I'm in my third year at a public university. Until recently I've managed to spend no more than $400 per semester by purchasing my textbooks online. The average I have spent on books is around $350. I'm a Human Services major and at my university, textbooks are often not required because a majority of professors in the program base their lectures off their previous clinical experience. This summer I'll be taking a course that requires $310 worth of textbooks- more than what I paid in the spring when I was taking six courses. </p>
<p>The reason I'm asking is because I want to learn how much other students are paying to see if I'm paying the average amount per semester or not. </p>
<p>I usually pay a lot less. I placed out of a bunch of intro courses with expensive custom books, and I got really good at online searching. I bought international editions of books I would want to keep for reference, and for books I wouldn’t want after the semester, I bought them used. My university bookstore buys back textbooks for the next semester at 50% of the new book price (then sell them for 75% of new price). I generally paid around 50% of new for the books online in the first place, so as long as a book was being used the next semester, I usually came out about even on those. There were also the $50 lab notebooks and required online resources, but on average I spent probably about $100 net on textbooks for a semester at most. My higher level classes often don’t have textbooks, which is a financial bonus.</p>
<p>I usually spend about $200-250 per semester and I attend a public state university. I rarely buy textbooks because I rent them online. It’s a more efficent way to save money. </p>
<p>I pay a lot for one major but hardly any for another. </p>
<p>My French classes have ridiculously expensive textbooks. My first four classes (so 2 year-long sequences) required packages that consisted of a textbook, workbook, and audio CDs, and since you needed to have the workbooks brand new because we filled them out, we had to buy the packages brand new. The first sequence’s set cost $270 and the second sequence’s cost $250. I’ve already spent about $200 for my 3 French classes next fall and I’m going to have to shell out more since I need to buy some CDs, too.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, I’ve spent maybe $150 total for my 5 writing and rhetoric classes. Most of my professors just pot PDFs online or we look at scholarly journals in our field. It’s so cheap and it’s so nice.</p>
<p>From my little sample, it’s clear that it all depends on your major, and I’d imagine that science and math classes would also be very expensive.</p>
<p>Science classes are expensive for the intro classes (lab books, custom textbooks, etc.) but the upper level classes tend to get into scientific papers, etc. so there often aren’t textbooks.</p>
<p>I spent 600-700 for my first semesters of community college on textbooks. It went down significantly to maybe 200 or less. For my junior and senior years of college, $100 tops. Most of the time my quarters have been under $40.</p>
<p>Borrow from friends and the library when you can.</p>
<p>The cost of textbooks goes down in the upper division for me as well. Part of it is less commonly used textbooks happening to sell for less somewhere online. And now I don’t have to pay for access codes.
First semester I had ~$220 on access codes and $85 on an actual book–sold to someone for $30 (it is great to take advantage of a website where students can directly sell their books to each other this because someone sold my exact textbook for $15).</p>
<p>2nd Semester I didn’t buy any actual copies of books, but was forced to use access codes for two classes (Engineering professors are smart with not having us buy access codes, math and science professors are not). ~$200. Let’s tack on $180 of electronics parts that I had to buy for a class to do projects lol.</p>
<p>3rd semester: I don’t know the full amount of textbooks I’ll need, but I do have the potential to stay below $100 because I don’t need to purchase expensive access codes from publishers.</p>
<p>Spent $300 for Lake Jr.'s STEM textbooks this year. The books were a combination of used copies, previous U.S. editions and International Editions. When buying the previous edition, double-check with the instructor regarding any differences. Often the instructor is sympathetic and will therefore outright bless the use of the older edition or provide copies of any new problem sets published in the latest edition. Often there is little or no difference between editions that were published within three years of each other. International Editions are the best bargain of all, if you buy the higher quality versions printed in Malaysia or Thailand.</p>
<p>For me, it depends on my classes and how many books I’m assigned in those classes. But I get almost all my books from Amazon.com which is cheaper than buying at the actual university bookstore. </p>
<p>I tend to spend about $300. I get them used then sell them back, however the downside to this is when a new addition is coming out in time for the next semester. I also found its better to buy books from someone else who has already taken the class as they often sell for a better price than buying online.</p>