<p>ahhah forgive me for the cheesy title... but ya thats my concern. A lot of these books are pretty expensive and the cost just adds up. Comparitively on amazon, a lot of these books are super cheap to rent. I'm used to having a textbook and taking notes from it by hand... But are there instances in the future where you need to refer to the textbook like even after the class is over. Basically, is it ok to rent textbooks for core classes like math 151, physics 218 and engr 111.</p>
<p>Lemme know what y'all think. Thanks</p>
<p>My S had a hard time finding rental prices for the ENG 111. He also found that some courses, like Math 151, 152 and 251, use the same textbook. Makes more since to buy these books.</p>
<p>I think it’s better now that the on-campus stores are doing rentals, but yes, some of them are tricky. Agree with whciv01. Unless the class is a two-parter just rent the first year or two. The only two-parters that I recall my ChemEngr son having were Calc & Thermo.</p>
<p>Hands down don’t get anything from the campus bookstore, except in cases where you are literally forced to do so because a prof publishes his own textbooks every couple of years or you have to buy some supplementary materials that are ONLY available there. For engineering you’re in a bit of a bind but definitely go ahead and buy math texts because those will cover more than one semester (good luck surviving a math class here…). Not sure for engineering, but a lot of those classes are like the math classes in that they use a single text for several class parts.</p>
<p>Protip: I believe all required texts must be on course reserve. This means they’re available for you to check out at the library, by the hour (but we’ve got a whole bunch of textbook scanners so as long as you’ve got the time…). Again, different for engineering because you have stuff like software that gets bundled in with your books.</p>