<p>We're trying to nail down costs vs. estimated readily available funds.</p>
<p>Question 1: For current students, especially engineering majors, which dining plan do you recommend and why? My thought for the first semester was to allow for D to have the most expensive one until she figures out how much she really needs. Do you find you do most of your dining on or off campus?</p>
<p>Question 2: For current engineering students: About how much should I really expect first semester Freshman Engineering books to cost? Was anyone able to successfully cut costs by ordering used books on-line? Did you wind up with professors telling you that you didn't need the books after all? If so, for which class?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t recommend getting the most expensive one. They roll over to the next semester, but not to the next year, so your daughter would end up having hundreds of unused, nonrefundable dollars. You should get either the lowest or 2nd to lowest. I have the 2nd to lowest ($1,400 per semester) and last semester I had like $200 left over. I mostly eat in the Commons, though. If she’s going to eat in Sbisa (that’s gonna drain her dining dollars fast) all the time then one of the more expensive ones would be more appropriate. </p>
<p>For books, I’m taking 16 hours this semester and my books (all bought used from the MSC bookstore) cost about $850. This includes non-engineering courses, though. Some of them I don’t use that often. For strictly engineering (including physics, math, chemistry), I’d say it’d cost around $500-$800, and I have used these ones a lot. You could probably find them cheaper on Amazon, and cheaper still if she can manage to buy them from other students.</p>
<p>Thanks!! That’s good advice on the meal plan. I can always add more later if needed. I like that books to bucks too! Whew. I think I can cut quite a few bucks off our estimated costs.</p>
<p>Ditto on the meal plan cromette! My son has the least expensive and is trying to figure out how he is going to spend it all. He stays on campus most weekends, but he just doesn’t spend as much as they say it will cost. </p>
<p>He did wait until his professors told him whether he truly needed books and ordered them online. The $500-800 is a good range.</p>
<p>Agree with the idea of adding to the meal plan later, because I’ve heard that unused bucks/dollars don’t transfer over from one year to the next. As for ordering texts as economically as possible, be sure to find the ISBN # of the text you’re trying to order before you start searching for it online. Often, those texts in the student’s major are ones they will want to keep for the future, so I like to order Unused copies and have found that I can often get new ones for cheaper than used ones at the bookstore. I agree with above post who mentioned Amazon; have ordered a lot from them, but there are also some local places in College Station to check out. Engineering and physics texts do tend to be expensive. For the engineering calculus, they catch a break in getting to use the same one for about 3 semesters, so that helps until they get to Differential Equations when you’ll start over buying math books. I’d say around $600-700 per semester if your student is having to buy a text for each class AND if you shop around competitively.
But don’t forget to look up the ISBN # once the professor posts it (often on the syllabi they post and will pop up on student’s schedule a few days before the semester begins). If you don’t have the exact edition of a given text, it can cause problems for the student trying to use the text and for us parents trying to return it.</p>