<p>I'm a chemical engineering major and I'm about to shell out $760 for my first semester...yikes!</p>
<p>I am actually pleasantly surprised. I spent over $700 a year on textbooks when I was in high school, and only spent $180 for books this semester.</p>
<p>My budget for the whole year (3 quarters) is probably something like $350-$400. I am in Electrical Engnieering btw. </p>
<p>Some strategies I employ:</p>
<p>1) The most obvious one is to buy from half.com or amazon.com used marketplace</p>
<p>2) Buy older editions. Believe me, the content is the same...the author may add one or two problems or shuffle up the order but you can always scan the problem sets from the reserve copies in the library. The difference in price between the 2nd and the latest 3rd edition can be huge. </p>
<p>3) Buy international editions. The one place I use to buy International Editions is AbeBooks, but there are others. For example, the book Digital Signal Processing by Proakis was costing me over $100 in my university bookstore. The same book (in Paperback format) from India (Pearson Education Edition) was around $30. </p>
<p>4) A more unscrupulous tactic: eMule/Torrent. These days almost all the frequently used Engineering/Technology books can be found in PDF/CHM format over the P2P networks....all you have to do is download and print. I only use this as a last resort if I can't find a good deal or fail to find the equivalent International Edition version. The books are often around 1000 pages so printing these is obviously a pain in the ass and holding a copy in your hands is much better than reading from the computer screen.</p>
<p>Sometimes you will also find that the professor will list a couple of books and will not even use one of them. Sometimes he will only use his lecture notes or assign a reader. This has happened to me a number of times in my EE classes. That's why, these days, I usually keep myself from buying the textbooks until after at least two weeks of classes are over. </p>
<p>For example, in my Communications course my professor listed a required textbook (costing over $100 which I bought for $27 online) and a reader ($19). Obviously, I bought both but he only used the reader, telling us that the textbook was a supplement on the first day of class. Well, that was too bad for the other students who already bought the textbook from the university bookstore for $100+ (since they were posted months before the class began) and couldn't even return it as the bookstore (as they usually do) had stringent return policies. That was a lesson well learned.</p>
<p>BTW I have never heard any of my friends in EE spend over $500 on books per quarter....ever. What they do in Liberal Arts I'm not sure.</p>
<p>I'm in MechE, and I spent about $240...it would've been about $700 had I gone to my campus bookstore, but I saved a lot of money doing the stuff people suggested above. I'm also borrowing a book from a friend.</p>
<p>
[quote]
thanks, I also have to buy Microsoft Office 2007 as a business student, make that $700+(need the book too...)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Check with your university if they have a discounted version of MS Office.
The CC I attended sold it for $60.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>I think I'm spending around $500 on books for this semester.
I usually get half the money back by selling the books online.</p>
<p>I'm at $325, and I still have 2 classes to go! Would've cost $500 for just those 3 classes at my campus bookstore. </p>
<p>I found my chem book on Ebay, $100 cheaper than the "used" price at the bookstore. Got the others from Half.</p>
<p>I'm also going to look into Chegg for my other classes. I didn't want to rent for A+P, Chem or English since I am taking those 2nd semester as well. (I know A+P and Chem are using the same book both semesters, so it'd be a pain to rent and return the same book twice).</p>
<p>$343, not bad for books that are Required and Recommended.</p>
<p>a little over $300</p>
<p>~$200, but i'm only taking 12 hours this semester..</p>
<p>It'll be around $200 for me this semester-since I'm an English major, most of what I'm buying now is literature as opposed to huge textbooks, so I'm saving a bundle :-)</p>
<p>Rich Hobo- it's not Amazon you buy from if you want cheap, it's Amazon Market (pretty much another ebay).</p>
<p>Incoming engineering student, $380.</p>
<p>I got my $210 chem textbook ($157 used through the bookstore) for $50 on amazon market.
That cheap of a price made my day.</p>
<p>normally, I don't spend over about $250 but I'm taking statistics and a science class this semester, and those books by themselves are $110 and $88+20 (2 books) used. When I bought books the other day, I spent $338, and I still have 2 more books to buy (they weren't in yet) URGH. It's going to top $400 this semester, easily. Boo.</p>
<p>i saved, oh, 50% by purchasing online. Most of my books are used. The university bookstore is a ripoff for both used and new books compared to online stores. For example, one of my English book cost $28 USED at the uni store, but online (half.com) i got it for $2+5 shipping=$7 total. Ugh, I hate colleges sometimes. All in all, i spent $160 on books this semester. If I bought all my books new, I would've seen a bill around the average $500. whew.</p>