Textbook: Rent or Buy? Also, how important are 'optional' texts?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Los Angeles
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<p>Hello, so I'm looking at textbooks for Chem 20a with Scerri and I plan on purchasing Principles of Modern Chemistry, 7th ed. by Oxtoby. Since it's $215 to buy and $87 to rent, I was considering just renting the book. But if this book would be used for more than one chem class, I might as well just buy it. </p>

<p>I also looked at the required/optional texts for Classics 42 and Math 32a and I'll obviously be purchasing the required texts, but what about the optional ones? Are they really important to have or would I be all right without them? Thank you! :D</p>

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<p>Sometimes optional texts are totally unnecessary. For example, a required text would probably be a hardcover of Principles of Modern Chemistry while an optional text would be the paperback copy. It really depends. </p>

<p>So yeah, most of the time they’re not really important.</p>

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<p>I’ll just buy all the required texts now then, haha. Thank you (:</p>

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<p>i hope you arent buying the book new lol. silly freshmen…if you spend 215 bucks for a single book your first quarter, youre gonna have a bad time.</p>

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<p>Lol yesprobably is right. Plus I heard the textbook is totally unnecessary for Scerri, and that he has a coursereader that he uses and is what you really need for the class. Check bruinwalk unflawless.</p>

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<p>Im a freshman doing chem20a with Scerri too and cos it said optional, I used textsurf.com which compares prices. Guess how much I bought a used good condition principles of modern chemistry for? $5.95 of amazon waddup</p>

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<p>What’s a coursereader?</p>

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<p>The thing about the online ASCULA textbooks, when it says required, it doesn’t always mean that that the professor requires. For chem 20A book, if you need to take 20B, you should buy it, same goes for books that are for part 1 and a part 2 of a class split into two. Honestly, if you dont mind waiting in line to buy books in the beginning of the year at the ASUCLA store or at the textbookplus store(slightly less expensive) you should wait until the first day of your class or until your syllabus comes out to decide on what books you need. For math 32A for example, my professor, Radko, didn’t mind us using the older edition of the book, the problems however were different but all you had to do was go to Powell library and check out the 7th edition book from course reserves and copy down the questions. The lessons and examples were basically the same. </p>

<p>Don’t buy all the required text! I’ve noticed that some of the required text only differ by what it includes, like a hardcover vs paperback, or loose leaf vs bound, or even just with or without a solutions manual. Another tip, unless you absolutely think you have to, I wouldn’t recommend getting a solutions manual, you should instead try cramster.com (or what used to be cramster, they got bought). You need a subscription to get both odd and even answers, but compared to the solutions manual, its less expensive, plus the solutions manual doesn’t include all the questions (at elast in math ones they don’t).</p>

<p>Buying used vs new makes a huge difference, same as older vs newest edition. You can also try looking up international versions of your book, they tend to be cheaper, just read the fine detail of your purchase to make sure the problem sets are the same as the US version. </p>

<p>Lastly, coursereaders are paperback, spiral bound books that you get from the course reader store, off campus in westwood most of the time, not sold anywhere else either than ucla store or at the course reader store. They are basically like textbooks. They are mostly bought for GE’s, but your professor will tell you if you need them or not. For those you can either get a new at the store, or look for someone who is selling it cheaper.</p>

<p>p.S. don’t rent a book if your planning on using it for more than one quarter.</p>

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<p>You should definitely buy all of the core science books (e.g. chemistry, physics, bio) and perhaps rent your upper division books. This is because you probably will be pursuing a medical career (I’m assuming) and thus have to prepare for the entrance examinations in the future.</p>

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<p>Yeah, haha, I’m pursuing a medical career and my dad placed an order for the book on Amazon last night. Hopefully I won’t be wasting too much because I do plan on taking Chem 20b and stuff. Thank you for the information about coursereaders; it was really helpful (:</p>

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<p>no sane person would go back and reread their old textbooks to “prepare for a medical career”</p>

<p>and by that i’m assuming you meant studying for the MCAT. in that case, there are prep books for that sort of thing. rereading the textbook would be a complete waste of time, and i’m genuinely sorry for you if that’s what you did/are planning to do…</p>

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