<p>Where is a good place to buy cheap books for classes? Is it the campus bookstore? How early should one buy the books?</p>
<p>I believe it is still cheapest to buy books online.</p>
<p>The only advantage of the University Bookstore is its accessibility, and the availability of required books. They also offer payment plans for books.</p>
<p>djca's right, online is almost always cheaper. There's a feature on the campus bookstore's website where you can see what textbooks have been ordered for your classes, though they might not all be showing up yet. Another option is emailing your profs and asking them what book they'll be using, but don't necessarily expect a quick response in the summer.</p>
<p>Sometimes your textbook will be one where the prof contracted specially with the publisher for a "Stony Brook edition"; some of those are different than the ones you can buy online (I think the intro calc textbook is different than the non-SB version in problem sets and such) and some are pretty much the same (the genetics book seems to be essentially identical except that it's got "SBU Bio 320" printed on the cover).</p>
<p>If you don't buy online, it's worth checking Stony Books, an off-campus bookstore right near the train station, to see if they've got a better price. Some profs only order their books at Stony Books to protest the high markups at the campus bookstore, which can be problematic for people who get bookstore accounts through financial aid.</p>
<p>Buy as early as possible to get the best selection of used books! The copies that aren't torn and highlighted are the same price as the ones that are, and the good ones usually get snapped up quickly. If you can make the trip to campus (or will be there anyway for a late orientation), it's worth checking the bookstore and Stony Books in the 1-2 weeks before move-in, when they're usually mostly stocked already but most people haven't bought books yet.</p>