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So I know that it's not the case for everyone, I can't imagine that people would get good grades in medicine doing what I do.
![[image loading]](http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d113/DJZapZ/Jank.jpg)
That's about 75% of my books for the last year and a half (I've sold a few). Of the pile, I've used/read about 5% of the pages and yet I get B+ to A- in classes with high failure rates. The pile was originally worth about $1000 and I'll admit that I'm pretty spoiled because it could have been a lot more expensive, but I believe that my books will be significantly more expensive in the next few years and I hope I start having to use them because it's a lot of money, and the resale value is awful.
It's pretty sad that I had to buy a $120 brick for accountancy and never opened it. Ended up with an A for the class. Maybe my teachers were incompetent to a certain degree.
Sorry this is kind of short, my room is a mess so I decided to be pissed about a $1000 of useless books for now.
Note: The networking book is not related to what I do in school.
 
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Dear Djzapz
You are from Canada. And I believe that if your teachers think you need these books you really need it. You probably think that its useless. Yes it kind of is BUT you have to look at it from different angle.
In SC2 you spam and waste your APM on some useless task because MAYBE if the game progress you will need to have warm up fingers (fingers = mind, because reading useless books = warm up mind) And no Im not going to continue because Im a little bit drunk and I dont want to be banned so Im sorry I wasted your time. I just wanted to tell you that Im jelly because your teachers care about you and give you tips what books you should read.
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Those are all mandatory books though, not tips 
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What does being from Canada have to do with anything...
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Books are so hit or miss for University. I read maybe 30% of the material. They're ridiculously expensive and have such poor resale value.
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On June 04 2011 02:17 JodoYodo wrote:
What does being from Canada have to do with anything...
To other Canadians: Jack shit.
To foreigners: They get to make fun of you for being nice (Even if you aren't).
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Someone always seems to find a PDF of the textbooks for my classes. Haven't bought a textbook in 2 years.
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When I was in college I did a few things to keep book costs down.
-Not buy it unless it appeared that it was actually required.
-Torrent
-If the book was only seldom used, go to library and do homework
-If its a short book that is only used for <3 weeks buy on amazon and return
-amazon/half
For most of my classes I ended up not buying any books though quite a few had a "required" book. For so many of my classes the profs were buddy buddy with the author and require it for their course but never actually use the book.
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On June 04 2011 02:24 Shifft wrote:
Someone always seems to find a PDF of the textbooks for my classes. Haven't bought a textbook in 2 years.
You're lucky. English's my second language and it's really rare for French books to end up as pdf's. It's probably even rarer in Quebec as I believe most of our books are written and printed here only, so we can't count on France ripping the stuff.
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On June 04 2011 02:17 JodoYodo wrote:
What does being from Canada have to do with anything...
We live in igloos and study in the cold weather all year long.
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Yea, I haven't actually read any of my textbooks either. I only had to do problems out of a few them. In my experience, buying used and selling online can get you at least a fair share of your money back. Maybe try selling to people the year below you as well.
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On June 04 2011 02:53 kOre wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2011 02:17 JodoYodo wrote:
What does being from Canada have to do with anything... We live in igloos and study in the cold weather all year long.
We like to say "aboot" and "eh?".
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I'd set a goal to at least start reading all the books you buy, for a couple reasons.
First, the instructors do think the books are relevant to the class, and presumably are asking you to buy them in the hope that you read them.
Second, I've found that many of the books that my instructors made me buy over my years in college were actually really interesting analyses or points of view on their respective topics.
It's one thing to get a chapter or two into a book and decide that it's just not worth your time, but if you never crack the book open, you might be missing a great opportunity to learn or experience something meaningful by reading it.
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Aye I've passed my classes without reading all of my books but every now and then I turn back to an old book to remember something I've forgotten. I keep em cause the value of selling a 100 dollar book for 10 dollars is just stupid to me. I'd rather keep them so I have them forever. I know one day in the future those books will be useful, even if I fucked off with them the first time around.
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I'm in college and I haven't bought a book in 2.5 years for CS.
Next year is gonna be my graduation year :D Can't wait
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Have you considered renting books for a semester or two? They're a lot cheaper and more convenient than buying and selling. Check your college bookstore if they have a renting service or go look for an online service. I've been renting my non major books since last year and I haven't had a bad experience with it yet.
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i stopped buying books since 3rd year (too dumb to realize before then)
most schools have textbooks on reserve in the library. If i really needed a textbook, e.g. when profs assigned questions directly out of the book, I'd just go to the library and work on them. This way, I'd wasted less time, and did the work more efficiently than studying at home.
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First I would try to sell the books back, I know when I went to college I'd get probably 40-50% of the original purchase price back (which sucked but it was something). If they won't buy them back, try selling them on either amazon or ebay, you can sometimes get more from there anyway.
The last suggestion I would have is to make sure you buy all your books online. Generally speaking, you can get the books MUCH cheaper than at the university's bookstore. Look around online for some coupons and who knows, you might be able to save a $100 or more just by effective use of online coupons. I know one semester if I had bought my books from the university bookstore it would've cost me around $550. I looked online, used online coupons, and got my books for like $120 or so.
From that point on, I only bought books online and I only bought them after the first week or two of classes. That way I knew what was in the syllabus and which books that may have been "required readings" but didn't get much use. It helped by not wasting money on books I would never read anyway. Based on your grades, I'd say this wouldn't be much of a problem for you to wait a week or so before buying your books.
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I usually wait until I'm 2 weeks into my courses before buying text books. I like to ask people who have taken the course if you need to do the readings or if the notes in class are enough. I usually then just pair that with how I felt during the first 2 weeks and make a call then. Usually its pretty easy to find someone who has taken the course who knows what you need to do and thats enough to make a call.
I also make a lot of friends in my school and we just loan eachother books for the courses we need. I gave out 3 books last semester and took in 2, and the other courses only needed 1, so my book budget was only $100.00 that semester.
Usually I don't try to micro manage things like this, but when you have the potential to save up to ~$500.00 a semester its definitely worth it.
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Yeah I think I'll hold off on buying the books unless it's absolutely necessary.
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Re-sell them 30% off bookstore price or buy used, then re-sell if the used books are still in fairly good condition. Basically doing the latter will make it 100% free for books and you might even be able to make a profit.
GL.
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Yeah, i just do Library loans these days.
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Just for perspective, I've taught university courses before, and am a year or so away from a Ph.D.
Buying textbooks is often a waste of time, especially if you are a good student and attend classes regularly. This goes double if the professor is recommending their own textbook for a course, since then they have a vested interest in selling as many copies as you can. For certain standardized courses such as lower-level math or science courses, the material is very generic, and if you can't download the exact textbook online you can certainly download a textbook that covers almost exactly the same material. Obviously you may have difficulties doing exercises from a textbook that you don't own, but this is what friends are for, or if you don't have any, every course should have a reserve copy of the course text available in the library.
Ask people who have taken the course previously, or even the professor, if you will be using the textbook a lot; many profs do not set the recommended textbook (I didn't last time I taught!) and may not plan to use it much at all. Most profs will be honest with their students about such things.
Obviously sell your old textbooks if you don't plan on using them again, and look up buy/sell sites specific to your university; you often can get better prices than selling back to the bookstore.
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I know that feel, every year our school undergoes the tradition of selling and reselling AP books between upperclassmen and underclassmen. This year, however, an ACLU lawsuit has mandated that the school provide AP books for everyone taking a class. Guess who has a lot of books that are now worthless?
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rent books from chegg. IDK if you can do it in canada but it's a bit cheaper
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The economics department guy has all the economics teachers use his books in their classes. Just horrible!
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What school do you go to? UdM, Laval?
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Most books I bought in college were necessary for a few assignments in the class, but absolutely a waste of money.
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I had to spend a lot of $ buying books my first two years. My third year, I decided not to buy a single book, even if it was mandatory. Got homework questions off classmates, and everything else I used the internet. Worked out great.
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Okay I had this exact same problem. I bought a 150 dollar book and could only find a place to sell for...get ready...FIFTEEN dollars. That's pretty much the average, it's silly. I bitched about it to my Dad and he suggested I put up ads on every bulletin board I could find on campus and it WORKED for 4/9 books.
I got at least 60% for them all. Just throw up the course number/section/the book/quality.
Even comparing vs the used price from local book stores - people saved money buying from me instead. One guy shares my major and I'm taking 2 classes this fall he won't be taking until the spring or fall next year and I'll likely sell to him again.
My biggest pet peeve was having required expensive books that we'd use maybe a week and never touch again. Or have a few readings from that only had 1-3 questions on the test. Such a waste.
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On June 04 2011 10:10 emperorchampion wrote:
What school do you go to? UdM, Laval?
UQAM
As for the books I sold, I got about 20-40% back. Better than nothing =(
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I dl the books i need since I can't get them otherwise without being ridiculously expensive.
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I have to read the shit out my books to understand everything in engineering, so I can't really relate. I have friends who seem to just ace stuff without trying/reading though.
I will say that if you need to sell any of your books back, Amazon gives much better prices than a bookstore, in one case amazon gave me double what the bookstore listed.
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chegg.com imo they rent books for like $25 :D
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On June 04 2011 13:46 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2011 10:10 emperorchampion wrote:
What school do you go to? UdM, Laval? UQAM As for the books I sold, I got about 20-40% back. Better than nothing =(
Ah, coolio
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EPT
