<p>I'm not sure if this has been addressed already but yeah. Current students, what has been your experience with paying for books? For the 1st quarter? The year? I'm aware of the new rental system (awesome) but do you think I'll be able to rely on that, considering professors might want me to purchase books written by them? I have a feeling that the "books" section is slightly misleading on my award letter ... any feedback would be very much appreciated.</p>
<p>Under the old system (no rentals, so everything was bought- mostly new, some used), I would spend about 40-50 dollars per (legit) class on average. This is like the price for a coursereader, 1/2 a textbook, or 3-4 paperback books. </p>
<p>There was one class that “required” a 200 dollar textbook but said we could/should return it. Another required a 100 dollar textbook but I got it on Amazon for 20. I factored that into my above calculation.</p>
<p>So for high priced textbooks, I would advise to get it on amazon and use a friend’s account with Prime to get it faster. If you have to get 5+ paperbacks, I’d recommend buying the first at the bookstore and ordering the rest online (assuming it’s worth your while).</p>
<p>You do not want to have to rely on the library for a needed book. I did this once and it was a mess.</p>
<p>Definitely depends on whether they are fuzzy or techy classes! Techy textbooks, as Senior0991 said can be upwards of 100 bucks, but are easily sold off to other students after (for about 2/3 of the price, so you can get most of your investment back). Usually, once on campus, lots of upperclassmen are trying to get rid of their science/math textbooks, so if you meet upperclassmen, ask them if they know anyone trying to sell books. Most annoying will be your IHUM reader, if you have one, because those can be $60-$90 and they can’t be sold back to the bookstore because they change every year. Some classes won’t require books, they will just distribute the material online, and other classes will have novels which can be purchased used for about $3-$13 a piece. In the post before mine, Senior0991 recommended you find a friend who has Amazon Prime to get cheap and fast shipping. Good news for you: Amazon is currently offering ALL students the “Prime” option free for one whole year if you have a .edu email address. SCORE.</p>
<p>Are most textbooks available in e-book form?</p>
<p>How much your text books cost will depend on where you buy them. The bookstore is generally a hell of a lot more expensive. For instance, last year I had to buy my French text, and the cost of a NEW book on amazon, was half the price of the USED one in the bookstore. So if you can, get your books off of amazon. There’s free 2-day shipping for a year if you’re a student and have an amazon account so you should take advantage of that :D</p>
<p>i looked for ebooks, and out of my four autumn courses, only 1 was available online -_- and it was much cheaper to buy a used book instead, so i just did that.</p>
<p>I’m looking at around $250. My Arabic books and a dictionary come to almost $150, but we use the same book for all three quarters, so it’s actually not bad (and I opted for new - I could have gotten them for $100). Unfortunately, course readers are really expensive and one of my textbooks (for urban studies) is tough to find under $40.</p>
<p>As far as eBooks go, I don’t think I had any. Although a lot of classes, instead of printing a coursereader, will post articles and such on Coursework and have you read them online. Some will do that in addition to a Coursereader. </p>
<p>I personally couldn’t stand reading online. It was annoying on the eyes and I couldn’t underline or annotate easily. Albeit it saves paper and ink and money. So conflicted…</p>
<p>Are we supposed to be buying our books already? Some freshman are, but I have only seen shady syllabi…</p>
<p>^no not really. I would wait until a couple days before class when things are pretty finalized. You can always return books if you drop the class. The return process for me was always pretty painless (except when I waited until the deadline winter quarter and it was pouring out ugh).</p>