<p>What do Barnard students do about text books?</p>
<p>Should I buy them at Columbia or buy them for cheaper online and have them sent to my Barnard mailing address??</p>
<p>I have been buying books on-line for D1 for a few years now. She is not at Barnard, though.</p>
<p>The trick is to be able to identify the textbooks with enough lead time to buy them elsewhere. In many cases her course selection was not firm intially, and some of the texts she needed weren't certain until she actually needed to use them. And once the semesters actually start fewer bargains are available.</p>
<p>We have had bad luck buying cheap books, such as novels for English class, this way. There were a number of cases where she received incorrect editions, or books in much poorer condition than we expected.</p>
<p>But it's worked out well for getting good-condition used copies of recent texts.</p>
<p>In a couple cases, she found used copies in her own bookstore that were about the same savings. Or not enough savings to justify the extra effort.</p>
<p>There are foreign versions of some texts, which are not in color and may have chinese,etc. writing in the margins, in addition to the English but have the same content and are considerably less expensive.</p>
<p>When buying sight unseen like this make sure you have the correct edition. preferably identified by ISBN number.</p>
<p>I bought what textbooks I could on half.com and am getting the others at Columbia's bookstore.</p>