War Liberal

Hear Hear. I just spent over $300 for one semester's books.

I'm planning on going back to grad school this summer or fall. The college will pick up the tuition, but not looking forward to the textbooks.

Few pointers from my grad school days:

~ Go to the SUPe store and write down the ISBN number of the books you need. (Or e-mail the professor and see if they'll send it to you.) They don't put it online, and you need it to do accurate price comparisons.

~ Speaking of price comparisons: mysimon.com made a huge difference for me. Sometimes the smaller retailers have the best price, sometimes it was at Barnes & Noble. Mysimon compares all of them.

~ I will say that I did like the service and prices I got with ecampus.com. At the end of the semester, they send an e-mail that says how much they'll give you for the books you bought from them! So don't be scared off because you don't know the name of the site; I've used them more than once with no problem.

~ Don't buy used paperbacks. I say this because I had a book fall apart in the middle of a semester, and you can only do so much with duct tape.

What grad program are you going to be in, Mac?

I'm not in yet -- I still have to retake the GRE. But I'm going to try for a doctorate in library science.

Good luck. And just remember, half the GRE is attitude. I was ever-so bitter, because I had to learn geometry I hadn't had in over 15 years. Then, I had my last wisdom tooth cut out a week before taking the thing - one I'd be telling dentists for years was there, but which eluded X-rays due to being so far back. I spent a week eating nothing but soup and yogurt, then took that stupid test. I did OK, best on the verbal, not so hot (but not deeply horrible) on the math and somewhat better than the latter on the analytical part, despite deciding to call it a day and guessing half the answers.

If you need a root canal a week before the GRE, then, just remember to . . . well, I don't know what you'd do to keep your attitude at the optimum. Just get the stupid thing over with.

Strange, the non-fiction books I buy are actually MORE expensive than most college textbooks. A useful computer programming reference book can set you back $50 at Barnes & Noble, easily.

I was thinking of mass-market NF hardcovers. However... You seen college textbooks nowadays? $50 for a paperback isn't unusual. The mean new price of the first eight books on Amazon's educational psych textbooks page is $108.59. For engineering, say, I expect it's a lot higher.

I have a friend in grad school for accounting who just spent more than $850 on textbooks. He said the bookstore employee ringing up his purchase actually let out an audible gasp when she saw the total.