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+--- Thread: Question for Parents of College Students (/showthread.php?tid=135410)
Question for Parents of College Students - graylocks - 04-26-2012
on the Cost of Attendance assessment for my son's college (kennesaw state university, GA) Books and Supplies is budgeted at $1500. i assume that's a rough estimate for textbooks being purchased new. oh, hell no.
assuming you used your well honed macresource deal skills in helping your child get textbooks, by what percentage could you best the original estimate you were given? paid only 50% as much? shaved off only about 25%?
if it makes any difference my son will only be doing the minimum requirements for science and math. he thinks he may major in sociology or music business entertainment. hahahahaha. the apple doesn't fall far from the tree...
Re: Question for Parents of College Students - mattkime - 04-26-2012
Its impossible to know ahead of time. budget for the full amount.
some programs use the newest edition the text book every year. some teachers are more aware of the price and find a way around it.
the biggest problem with deal shopping for books is that profs might not provide the book list until the day of class and then assign a reading for the next morning.
personally, i'd do what i could to avoid paying retail for books. check amazon, check amazon used, check abebooks.com, check alibris.com, check torrents.
might be worth getting an ereader/ipad just to avoid buying a few books.
Re: Question for Parents of College Students - rgG - 04-26-2012
That figure seems high. I would estimate that my daughter spent less than $500 per semester on books, and usually quite a bit less. She often rented the book or I bought it used on half.com or Amazon. As far as supplies, I don't really know what they mean by that, but I don't remember any big expenses other than books and maybe a few other printed materials she had to buy. I would think you could get out for $500-$750 easily, and probably more like $350-$500, for basic core curriculum courses.
Re: Question for Parents of College Students - TLB - 04-26-2012
With my current child, not much if any. He is 500 miles away and the required texts don't seem to be released far enough in advance to do an addall, amazon or half.com search. My older kids went to fairly local universities and we were able to get ISBN intel early and saved a lot on books. The current trend seems to be rentals--my college student has been doing rentals for Gen Eds and non major course where he doesn't want to keep the textbook for reference material. Student organization or Greek book exchanges can also save money without the Bookstore as a middleman. Unfortunately I'm not as lucky as rgG, my childs book expenses are closer to a grand a semester. I think he has had engineering texts that blew past $300 for a single book.
Re: Question for Parents of College Students - graylocks - 04-26-2012
mattkime wrote:
might be worth getting an ereader/ipad just to avoid buying a few books.
he has an iPad 2 and enjoys personal reading on that.
TLB, are rentals done through the campus bookstore or is there a company that one goes to for rentals?
Re: Question for Parents of College Students - OWC Jamie - 04-26-2012
$1500 for books alone seems high, but start throwing some arts supplies ( sculpting and photography especially ) and lab fees into category and you can hit $1500 fairly quick.
Re: Question for Parents of College Students - rgG - 04-26-2012
Many of the college bookstores now rent textbooks, but you can also rent them through Chegg.com. I think there may be other rental places, too.
Edit: looks like Amazon now rents Kindle versions of textbooks, who knew?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000702481
Re: Question for Parents of College Students - TLB - 04-26-2012
graylocks wrote:
TLB, are rentals done through the campus bookstore or is there a company that one goes to for rentals?
His have been through the campus bookstore. But I believe there is one or two off campus bookstores in town that also do rentals. I haven't seen a central clearing house that rents textbook, but I also haven't looked.
Re: Question for Parents of College Students - abevilac - 04-26-2012
Things are changing fast with textbooks but since bookstores, publishers and the universities themselves take a cut in every book sale, it's going to take a long time before costs come down. I know one midwestern university gets several million dollars a year from Barnes & Noble for the books they sell to their students and they depend on that revenue stream for a number of things.
My daughter is a senior and an art major but she had her share of expensive biology and psychology books. Sometimes she bought the book with her roommate and they shared or sometimes she bought the book online and read the library's copy until her book came in. It's true they never seem to get the titles in time to do this kind of online buying. I don't know why this is because I teach at a university and they ask me my book selection six months out.
$1500 is high but you should probably figure for at least half that.
Re: Question for Parents of College Students - Lemon Drop - 04-26-2012
Amazon student prime has free two-day shipping for college students, so they do have time to get the books at the last minute at deep discounts if the ISBN was not available earlier. And it is important to have that number and not just a title/author or you can end up with the wrong book. And of course they can sell the books back.
My son saved around $500 this past year buying books that way instead of at the university book store, where even used books ran 50% higher or more than what he found online.