<p>I was wondering if there's a list somewhere of required texts for the first-year core classes...it would be really helpful to know in advance, maybe do some summer shopping...</p>
<p>I think you can find what you're looking for at:
<a href="http://www.bookstore.caltech.edu/caltech/textbooks.asp?mscssid=42EGKSNHS2RC8HUDQWMFH8ALK42SEN9F%5B/url%5D">http://www.bookstore.caltech.edu/caltech/textbooks.asp?mscssid=42EGKSNHS2RC8HUDQWMFH8ALK42SEN9F</a></p>
<p>Just look at last years courses. Most should stay the same for next year (except Bi 1 for one), but no guarentees.</p>
<p>Wise words from my first week at Caltech: "Don't buy books, just use Google."</p>
<p>However, if you really do want to buy books, wait until you get here and you can get them cheap off of upperclassmen.</p>
<p>As you may have seen in cghen's link, the bookstore will match prices for new in-stock textbooks at amazon.com, barnes and noble, textbookx, buy.com, walmart, ecampus.com, biggerbooks.com, and alldirect.com. </p>
<p>If you're looking to buy used and you think you've found a good price over the summer, you could take it or you could hope for a better price from upperclassmen.</p>
<p>If they manage to fix it, PriceTrout makes life so much easier. For now, </p>
<p>"Added Fri Feb 10 10:41:06 2006 UTC (4 months, 3 weeks ago) by jeremye
File length: 100 byte(s)</p>
<p>Initial import of PriceTrout v2. Sadly, the original PriceTrout is no longer with us due to two independent hard drive failures."</p>
<p>What I did in Firefox was I made a folder for the price-matching sites' bookmarks. This makes an option to open them all in tabs, so I do that and paste the ISBN number of the book I'm looking for in each one. Not quite as easy as PriceTrout (an application that searches the 8 sites for the lowest price on all new Caltech textbooks), but it's a little easier than other ways.</p>
<p>Another unrelated useful link:</p>
<p>(empty for the moment)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.gossiptron.com%5B/url%5D">www.gossiptron.com</a></p>
<p>I usually use <a href="http://www.campusi.com%5B/url%5D">www.campusi.com</a>. It searches most of the places the bookstore price-matches, plus several other big ones (such as ebay) so I can decide if it's cheaper to price-match or buy the books used online (usually the latter is true).</p>
<p>dlo is right, though -- for frosh year, your best bet is to wait and buy books from upperclassmen when you get here -- you'll probably get half (or more) off easily. The exception to this would be hum books (fewer upperclassmen sell these).</p>
<p>FYI: The gossiptron is only used by one house. Whether or not the posts there are representative of the school as a whole is questionable.</p>
<p>Why do people never tell me when things are broken? By the looks of it, we knocked out PriceTrout Second Edition With Fresh Pine Scent sometime during Prefrosh Weekend, during server changes for the "Who Ate My Cow?" stack. It's up now, although at some point it will be down again for a backend upgrade, and it lives here: <a href="http://turbine.caltech.edu/pricetrout/%5B/url%5D">http://turbine.caltech.edu/pricetrout/</a></p>
<p>Hi, I'm SteelPangolin, I wrote PriceTrout, and I can tell you that there's absolutely no point in buying Core textbooks before you get to Tech. This is because upperclassmen hate the sight of their own Core textbooks and will give you ridiculous deals just to get rid of them. Also, you can get the CS 1 textbook online at <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/%5B/url%5D">http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/</a> and I wish someone had told me that before I bought one, because it's a terrible book and I pretty much only use my copy for visiting percussive education upon the thick of skull.</p>
<p>The Gossiptron only represents a faction of one house, and I think most of them graduated this year. Don't let that color your view of Caltech: while many Techers are indeed creepy and stalkerish, each House implements that in their own way according to their own traditions! That's one of the exciting things about this school, and I see many of you have already begun to participate by stalking Ben Golub.</p>