<p>What is the deciding factor as to whether you buy your textbooks from the campus bookstore, buy online or rent your textbooks online? Is it:</p>
<p>Cost?
Availability?
Loyalty to university bookstore?</p>
<p>Please let me know. Thanks.</p>
<p>I usually buy books where they are the cheapest (i.e. online), unless I need it on the very next day or it is something that I can only get at the bookstore (e.g. textbooks that professors wrote themselves but have not published yet, course packets etc).</p>
<p>Aside: Haverford gives all of its students a $500 credit at their bookstore every year (or semester?), which would be a strong incentive to buy there.</p>
<p>Caltech's bookstore will do price matching to certain online retailers (down to the amount of money they paid for the book). So if I can get it for the same price there, I'll buy it in the school bookstore. Otherwise I'll pick it up online since it's almost always cheaper there. If I need it in a hurry, I'll just drop the extra $10 for expedited shipping, since it's still probably $50 cheaper than the bookstore.</p>
<p>Also, never rent. I imagine for pretty much every text out there you can do better by buying it used and selling it on ebay at the end of the term.</p>
<p>I always buy online unless there's no other way except at the bookstore. It's cheaper by a significant amount 95% of the time.</p>