Vinh Nguyen
Most people know textbooks in college can be costly. According to this article from The New York Times, most students spend from $700 to $1000 a year on textbook, making it the largest cost after tuition, room and board. As a matter of fact, a recent report found that the prices had nearly tripled from 1986 to 2004, rising an average of 6 percent a year, almost double the inflation rate. For these reasons, some students mentioned in the article tried to find ways around by sharing or borrowing books from other students or buying 2 out of 15 assigned books in order to save money. Nonetheless, there are a few ways one can save his or her money.
First, one can get a new textbook but older editions or overseas, which sometimes can be less expensive yet brand new with no highlights on every page. By doing so, one can save some money while he or she can still get a complete "package", including CDs, problem sets and sometimes even a workbook.
Second, one can buy used books from bookstores or websites such as Amazon.com, Half.com, CheapestTextbooks.com, etc. The only real disadvantage to this method is that it might take a few weeks for the books to arrive if one is ordering them via online.
Lastly, not many students know that they can actually rent textbooks for half the price of a brand new textbook from websites like TextbookRentals.com, Collegebookrenter.com, etc. Nonetheless, there are some inconveniences to this method. One can't keep the book for further studying or reviewing and he or she cannot write on the book; otherwise, he or she has to pay the full price instead and ends up paying more than a brand new book.
With the economy like today, one would want to save some money, potentially hundreds of dollars, to spend on other things. Finally for the last tip, one can buy used books online, which are half the price of the brand new books, and sell them back to the bookstore for half the price of the brand new books at the end of the semester. Thus in the end, if the books are still in good condition, one will end up not paying more than $10 total for textbooks.
Monday, November 2, 2009
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