<p>how much will I have to spend as a biological chemistry/art history major? I'm not opposed to dining hall food, and I am willing to shop around for books.</p>
<p>Bio/chemistry textbooks can be expensive, but the good thing about them is that people are likely to have them used and be interested in selling them. I’d say a fair estimate is $300/quarter for books altogether (if you are willing to shop around for good deals and buy used books), and also realizing that the first quarter of most years will be more expensive than subsequent quarters for buying that year’s lab manual, and you can sell books at the end of the quarter or the beginning of the next quarter as well.
If you’re willing to live on the cheap, you can get by pretty decently on very little money for yourself during the week, especially if you eat in the dining hall when it is available. I find it possible to get by comfortably on $30/week in personal money for one meal out and small personal expenses- some weeks I want to have more, some weeks I don’t spend much at all, but that’s a pretty basic estimate.</p>
<p>Books have been less. Travel has been more, specially to get back after Christmas and Spring break. Miscellaneous expenses also have been a lot less.</p>
<p>Non-science classes can get you with the sheer number of books you need. For example, the poli sci class I took the past quarter with John Mearsheimer (who is awesome, btw) had a book list of about 8-9 books + 15 or so JSTOR documents. Now, I can’t read anything longer than 5 pages on a computer, so I had to print the papers out… So they can add up.</p>
<p>I took a topics course in art history to satisfy the fine arts requirement instead of introduction to art (history). There were no required texts for purchase, but the instructor did recommend one or two for context and background knowledge. Most of class time was devoted to listening to the instructor lecture on 40 to 50 powerpoint slides of ancient Greek or Roman art. There was a ton of reading on chalk, and unless you’re willing to print out an average of around 30 pages per document (or perhaps forced to), I would get used to reading on the laptop. I know that other topics courses are conducted in this manner, but introduction to art is apparently discussion based, yet I would anticipate few, if any required texts for purchase.</p>