<p>Have the schools that your children attend listed textbooks required for the fall semester yet?</p>
<p>Yup. D is going to Loyola MD and when you go to the bookstore’s site, you can look by the course & section to see what is required—well maybe not all are “required,” you know that sometimes a prof will only have them read a chapter or two in a book & they can do that from the library. But the books are shown on the store’s site. Inclluding ISBNs.</p>
<p>We have already been buying some of them – using Amazon & getting used.</p>
<p>For some courses yes, for some courses not yet.</p>
<p>Yes. We got the information from the school bookstore website. We ordered the books from Amazon.</p>
<p>We have nothing listed yet. It is driving me nuts. As much as I hate to say this because my son is so happy at this school, I find this most unfair and the cynical part of me feels that this is intentional so that extra dollars flow to the school. It goes hand in hand for me with the fact that at this late date our financial aid info has not been received (this is not an error btw). His school starts fairly early compared with others too. Sigh…</p>
<p>Not yet. The school bookstore website says Fall ordering starts July 25. So I guess that’s when all the listings will appear. Classes start on Aug. 23. Should be enough time to get them all ordered from elsewhere.</p>
<p>Packmom, thanks. I guess I am just losing patience because last year some books we ordered took some time to get to us and I thought they might arrive too late and end up costing me more to ship the school! We did not ship directly to the school for a few reasons.</p>
<p>Is your son on good enough terms with profs at this point to email them & ask for the booklist? Most profs are very sypathetic towards the students’ need to economize any way they can on books. They do remember when they were in the same boat.</p>
<p>JRZ, he did do that last year. He would have no problem in doing that again. I did not push it because it was a little helpful last year, but did not make ALL that much difference (one professor was out of the country, one was getting dept. approval, a new book was involved for another class, and so forth). My son has been working so hard and has had little free time so I did not ask him to do this again. Thank you for the suggestion though! Doing this can help!</p>
<p>I’m amazed you don’t have your returning student FA award letter yet! That’s ridiculous. Isn’t the bill just about due? We had the letter in early June and the bill is due by August 1 and I thought that was bad!</p>
<p>My son has been ordering his own books - I have not been involved at all. He uses Amazon Prime. He has not typically ordered books until the first day of class - which I would think is late - but he prefers to actually attend the first class - see what the prof says about which book(s) they will be using the most (he then orders) - which book(s) they might use only a few times (he just borrows from an older friend) and so forth. He has done a wonderful job of keeping his book expense down - from maybe $600+ the first semester when he bought all the listed books at the university bookstore to about $200/semester now - with a combination of buying used books, buying through Amazon and borrowing some.</p>
<p>When our DD and DS were returning students, they actually knew the texts before they left school for the previous semester (right after registration closed). </p>
<p>I got an email today that says some books will be available on Kindle this year. That is worth checking…don’t know if the prices are competitive or not.</p>
<p>Anyone have experience with Follett books? DS’ college bookstore is switching from a traditional local-run store to being run by E. Follett. They have textbooks for rent and also e-books to download.</p>
<p>Your daughter or someone in a similar age-range/friend should be familiar with torrents (used to illegally download music and movies, etc.). Sometimes, up-to-date e-books can be found on these sites… I do this and purchase from Amazon as much as possible. In fact, I like having the e-book and the textbook so I don’t have to carry the textbook around all day to class but I can still mark up and use a physical textbook to study.</p>
<p>But my books are also listed already except for one class.</p>
<p>[Amazon</a> launches Kindle Textbook Rental service for students - TechSpot News](<a href=“http://www.techspot.com/news/44736-amazon-launches-kindle-textbook-rental-service-for-students.html]Amazon”>Amazon launches Kindle Textbook Rental service for students | TechSpot)</p>
<p>P.S. Financial aid for my returning student daughter didn’t come until August. I know this because every year I set up my “payment plan” before I knew our exact costs.</p>
<p>Re: FA-RVM, we pay by payment plan. The first payment is not due until next month. It is amazing at how late the information comes though. Thumper, I thought this school was the only one to send FA info so late! FWIW, they did reassure that returning students can expect to see about the same package as the year before (of course Staffords increase, and cost increases were not mentioned, w/s or sub vs. unsub not discussed).</p>
<p>I have used E Follet for an online class previously and it was a nightmare, ORDER EARLY! --a lurking student :P</p>
<p>Wow - I had no idea that some schools did the returning student FA so late. I would have a hard time with that.</p>
<p>We got our textbooks and class schedule on June 5 for a frosh.</p>
<p>Class schedule was never a problem. My son had a schedule the spring before starting as a rising freshman. As a returning student he had his schedule as soon as he registered last spring. He has since made some changes to his schedule, which was also very easy to do.</p>