<p>or do you sell them back?</p>
<p>Sell them back. I don’t care if it’s even for just $10, it’s still cash! I can always find the info. online or in the library.</p>
<p>LOLOLOL. October47 hit the nail right on the head. With all these free PDF textbooks online, lectures, practice exams/problem sets online, who needs to keep the textbook?</p>
<p>Yes, if they have material I would like to refer to in the future, or if the textbook itself doubles as a reference book (like Basic Training in Mathematics by Shankar). But a generic textbook like a calc book I get rid of since one calc book is the same as another, or if I thought the textbook I had was inferior (the Halliday physics textbook is pretty sub-par) I’ll get rid of it, maybe buy a dirt-cheap older edition of a better book if I really need to have a reference.</p>
<p>I usually try to rent whatever books I can so I can get my full money back. Though there are so many books for so many different classes in three quarters that I almost always end up keeping 3-5 every quarter. If the sell-back price is too little, odds are I decide to just keep the book and bring it home - maybe for reference or maybe as a testament for something learned.</p>
<p>The only textbook that I would suggest you not sell back is your freshman english. you will be amazed at how many times you will go back to it looking at how to do a specific type of quote, or a review of APA, MLA, or if you get that odd prof that wants a paper in Turabian format.</p>
<p>Sure you could google the answer, but after a while you will have this text highlighted and paper clipped for easy access and you can just open right to the sections you need while writting.</p>
<p>I keep all of my books, period. For my major specifically, they have the students use one textbook for all the music theory classes, two for most of the musicianship classes, etc. because the books are so expensive and the department wants us to get our money’s worth.</p>
<p>^ I’m in the keep everything crowd. A bit obsessive, I like my books.</p>
<p>I keep everything, and my friends in grad school love me for it since they know they can always come to me with a question and we can find the answer in a book.</p>
<p>Often times the usefulness of a book is when you don’t know the actual question you want to ask, but know the general idea of what you’re not sure about. It’s next to impossible to google that kind of question, and is very difficult to skim through pdfs in the same manner you can as a book.</p>
<p>I keep everything, and my friends in grad school love me for it since they know they can always come to me with a question and we can find the answer in a book.</p>
<p>Often times the usefulness of a book is when you don’t know the actual question you want to ask, but know the general idea of what you’re not sure about. It’s next to impossible to google that kind of question, and is very difficult to skim through pdfs in the same manner you can as a book.</p>
<p>Yes. As a chem major (now microbiology) everything is in this crazy sequence so it helps to as something concrete to go back too. If it’s a regular math book or for an English class I just felt like taking, I sell that back in a heartbeat.</p>
<p>I kept my freshman English book, but everything else I intend to sell back. All my history classes were just general survey classes so there’s not really a need.</p>
<p>I keep things selectively. If I have reason to believe that a textbook may be useful or important in the future, even if it is a very slim chance, I generally keep it. I’m still kicking myself for selling back my freshman year psychology textbook (long before I had any idea that I would eventually be a psychology major) because it was such a good textbook and in hindsight, it would be worth more to me now than the money I got for selling it. </p>
<p>Then there’s other books I clearly don’t want to sell back because they are precursors to other subjects and classes. For example, I don’t want to sell back my experimental psychology textbook before I take research methods, seeing as “Research Methods” is the title of the book. And of course my APA style guide isn’t going anywhere any time soon.</p>
<p>I went to community college for 2 years for lower division work, and I sold back everything I could including ones regarding my major (pschology/social behavior). I transferring to a university this fall and I am going to (eventually) take all the upper division versions of the classes I took in CC and I’ll most likely keep those. Stoked though because I got all of my books for the fall quarter for about $25 
good condition too 
gotta love half.ebay and amazon!</p>
<p>^^Jealous. I’ve tried to find books for my university everywhere, but there are “packages” with weird ISBN numbers that don’t match up to anything so I’m stuck spending $500 for books instead of the $50-150 I’d spend a semester at my CC. <em>sigh</em></p>
<p>^^ I had to spend a lot on my CC books 
like 200-400 a semester :/. So it’s a nice change :P. however, my uni now costs ~ $25k a year vs. $1-2K at CC soooooo it’s give and take hahah. 1 book is a bit of a guess though, another is 10% of a guess (prof is teaching same class in summer, so I’m assuming she is using the same book in the fall, plus it’s an edition before [which she said was okay]), the other one I know is the book I need.</p>