Textbook Shopping

It’s that time of year again, folks! The start of the new semester means shopping for more textbooks. As a freshman, a lot of your spring semester classes are often the second part of the classes you took in the fall semester; calculus, engineering, english, and chemistry (if you’re lucky enough to want to be a ChE, BSE, or MSE major) so your textbooks carry over. However, there are other textbooks you have to buy for the new semester including books for physics, electives, and labs.

Shopping for textbooks can be fun if you’re a huge nerd like me. Buying books at the bookstore isn’t the only option nor is it always the cheapest. You can rent your books, buy them used, or buy them new. Buying new textbooks is nice if you’re into dropping hundreds of dollars on a book you might never look at again, but it’s not always the most practical option. Buying used textbooks is a good option too but they can cost up to $100, depending on the condition you want to buy it as. Renting books is the perfect option for books you’ll only ever use for one or two semesters because they are often less than $50 for the entire semester and most companies will give you free return shipping when it comes time to send it back.

There’s many places you can buy or rent books from online and in stores. A popular destination is Amazon for buying new and used books. You can also rent books from Amazon, but the quality isn’t always the best. Chegg is a good place to rent books from AND they give you free stuff in the box as well as 30 free minutes on Chegg Study where you can talk to an expert online about any subject, not just the subject of the book you just rented. You can also buy books on Chegg but it’s just as expensive as buying books from the seller. You can buy books from Bookholders on Main St, University Bookstore, Volume 2, and Barnes and Noble.