<p>I've seen a couple of threads about freshmen textbooks, and I'd like to touch on that subject briefly before passing along an important piece of info.</p>
<p>First of all, you really don't need to worry about getting textbooks in advance. The bookstore has plenty of copies about them, and the first week or two aren't bad (i.e.- if you decide to order online when you arrive at Caltech, you'll be fine). Really. Trust me on this.</p>
<p>Now, the important bit. If you like buying new textbooks (a practice that I tend to prefer, as I'm planning on keeping my textbooks more or less forever), you can buy them at the Caltech bookstore. The big deal is that the Caltech bookstore will do price matching with "buy.com, amazon.com, ecampus,.com, barnesandnoble.com, textbookx.com, biggerbooks.com, and walmart.com" All you have to do to get the discount is to print out the online ordering page (make sure you get the ISBN) and bring it with you when you go to purchase the textbooks. You can save a bundle on buying new textbooks this way and get the benefit of searching through the stack of books for that particular one in the very best shape (yes, I know, I'm particular about books...).</p>
<p>If you want to go the alternate route of used, you can often get textbooks cheaper / in better shape from just buying them from upperclassmen, either through Donut or just asking around. I spent maybe $200 on books for the entire year last year, and I had to buy a few...</p>
<p>The schedule that they sent me has H/HPS/Hum 10 on it, but there is no textbook listed on the bookstore site.
Does anyone know the textbook for History of Science?</p>
<p>If you find Apostol on Amazon, let's say, for $15, you print that page and take it to bookstore, and they will sell you Apostol for 15 bucks, if they can. (So, you won't have to pay for shipping and wait for the book)</p>
<p>Hriundeli is right -- the bookstore will lower its price to either it's financial minimum (what they paid for the book) or to the price that you find on a site that they will price-match to (whichever is higher).</p>
<p>The new Caltech student government website has a price-match utility that will automatically look up book requirements for courses based on what caltech bookstore has and display a list of prices from the bookstore and all the websites it will price-match to -- this is a convenient way to find the lowest price for each book.</p>
<p>This may be a silly question but does the Caltech bookstore only price match to the price of new textbooks from amazon.com, etc. or do you price match to the used books selling on amazon.com and other sites as well?</p>
<p>Also, ksarma, for some reason the price matchi utility doesn't work for me. I selected Fall, 2007 on the drop down menu, but when I select a subject, nothing shows up in the fourth drop down member (which I presume is supposed to be the course number?)...</p>
<p>sorry, I realized my question came off as a bit misleading. What I meant to ask was does the Caltech bookstore price-match to the price of new books or used books selling on the list of websites you provided? But from looking at the last bullet on the link you provided, it seems that the bookstore only price-matches to new books.</p>
<p>I'm still sort of confused. Does this mean that if I want to price-match to buy used books from the Caltech bookstore, then I have to pay for the price of a new book selling on buy.com, amazon.com, ecampus.com, etc.?</p>
<p>You managed to catch the site in the middle of a very short downtime, my apologies. It ought to be working now. Let me know if you still have problems.</p>
<p>As for price-matching used books, it's my understanding that you cannot price-match at all with used books, only new ones (so, if you want to buy a used book at the bookstore, you're stuck with their price). That being said, it's also my understanding that you can actually physically choose a used book to buy from among their collection -- this might be a benefit over buying a used book elsewhere, as you will know exactly what you are buying. That being said, I've never actually done that, so I don't know if this is true.</p>
<p>As mentioned earlier, upperclassmen are often looking to sell their used books. They will (read: should) be selling them for less than the bookstore and you could probably try to price match with them.</p>