<p>Is it necessary to read portions of the textbook before the class even begins? I'm talking about the beginning of the year, not regular days of the week.</p>
<p>I noticed that people are talking about buying their textbooks only after the first day of class... is this advisable? When should I buy my textbooks?</p>
<p>It depends on the way the class is set up. If your class has required novels/books, it would be helpful to read ahead. For big textbooks, however, reading ahead might not help much, especially given that some professors only use a textbook for supplemental reading (they write their exams based on lecture and the course reader). But, if you’re bored, you can always email your professor and ask for a course syllabus to read any assigned pages.</p>
<p>A course reader is tailor-made for each course and contains photocopied excerpts from various resources (so you won’t have to buy a lot of books), but you can’t purchase them until a copy center receives the order from your professor at the beginning of the semester.</p>
<p>^ do some courses only have course readers and no textbook?</p>
<p>^ Yup, which can be both good and bad - while readers are cheaper, you can’t really resell them to anyone (unless the professor never changes their reader, I guess).</p>
<p>lame. i keep looking up on the bookstore and it’s not listed so i guess i have to wait. grrr i want to get ahead!</p>
<p>Reading your textbooks ahead is definitely advisable. Outside of anything math/science-related I’d say it’s a great idea, and you should have no problem. Anything pertaining to the aforementioned disciplines will include things you may not understand, but dont be discouraged; ask someone else or just skip it.
You won’t be taking anything very advanced your freshman fall anyway.</p>
<p>Will it grant you an automatic A? No
Will it give you a leg-up on everyone else? Yes</p>
<p>They don’t sell readers at the bookstore. Profs usually send out orders to printing centers at the beginning of the semester (Berkeley’s printing centers include Copy Central, Krishna Copy, Zee Zee Copy, etc. - think of them as “indie” versions of Kinkos), so you’ll buy the reader 1-3 weeks after class begins.</p>
<p>What’s the point of reading ahead? I can only see a benefit if you decide to reread the material again as it is assigned in order to reinforce the material.</p>
<p>What I usually try to do is skim the reading for the entire week, so that way when the instructor introduces a new topic, I’m not completely unfamiliar with the topic.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies. I guess reading ahead is good, but really optional.</p>
<p>Now, when do I need to buy my textbooks?</p>
<p>I already bought mine…which was totally fine for my math 16a, just a cheap little paperback that i skimmed over…but then i forked out $160 for an ES text that i read later on courserank you don’t even use. i was also told that you shouldn’t buy until the first week of class when the prof might say you don’t even need it. i’d hold off on the big expensive ones but for standardized classes like math or science i dont see a problem in buying them now…might avoid paying more later. but yea totally optional.</p>
<p>sweet thanks, I didn’t know that our timeline for buying textbooks was so lax</p>
<p>Some classes even have books on reserve (usually with 1 hour or 24 hour checkout limits) at the library, so there’s no rush to buy your books.</p>
<p>I would not recommend it, unless if you absolutely have nothing else to do. Every teacher will want you to learn what he wants, and that might not be in the textbook at all. This is especially true for science classes.</p>