hi iam looking for the calc books , materials science book, chem book , and the computer science book MD3 one where coudl i find them used and for like 50% or 30% off

There are a few things you can try, the best two probably being:
1. Undercovers - students take their books there to be sold at low prices
2. Buying one from an upperyear directly. Ask some of your welcome week reps during WW

1. click titles bookstore for used books, but i'm sure you can get it for less if you buy from upper years.
2. try facebook market place
3. try titles classifed for contacts of people that want to sell.

There are loads of articles and discussions on MacInsiders about this topic

Used Books = Save Money!

MSU Used Book Store

First Year Textbooks

Textbooks

used textbooks - old editions

Textbooks Again

Textbooks

text books and titles



This thread doesn't belong in the Residence forum. I'm moving it to General Discussion.

I've been buying my books from AbeBooks.com for the past couple of years and never had an issue. Searching for the book by ISBN is the safest way to get exactly what you need.

You can also sometimes find upper years selling them on Facebook's market place

Or you could buy them for the full price and then sell them so then it's kinda like getting it 50% off. Just don't sell it back to the bookstore, i was told its a rip

yeah. the buy back at titles sucks sometimes. it really depends if they have a demand for it. sometimes some textbooks they will buy back at like 20% the price you brought your textbook to be. but then if they don't have enough of it and want alot, you can get like 50% or even 60%. so i guess it all depends. selling to other students is better price but more of a hassle.

question: as a first year should i buy used textbooks or new ones and are the first year textbooks even useful or is it all a review of high school material? another thing, do the second year courses build on material covered in first year or is it a fresh start? thanks for your help in advance

Mak at Mac,
Buy used if you can cause it saves you money but make sure it's in decent condition.

Buy your textbooks if your prof says you should, sometimes they say it's not really needed, others base their tests on the textbook. Go to class before you buy any textbooks.

Second year courses will build on things you learned in first year but how much depends on the course. Sometimes it's passing knowledge that comes in handy in second year, other times theres a formula or something that you have to know in order to do the new material.

Some first year textbooks are excellent - I used Stewart (Calculus Textbook) all last year- but I didn't touch my linear algebra one. It really depends on what you plan to major in - It's handy to hold on to the first year books that directly relate to the main focus of your program of study- I take physics, so I still looked at first year physics and math books, and a friend of mine in chemistry does the same with her first year chem book, and so on and so forth.

Buying new sometimes has advantages- new books sometimes comes bundled with software and packages for extra help - but most people I knew never used them. In a few sucky caseses, a professor will take advantage of web packages that come bundled with new textbooks for things like quizzes and assignments, which a used text book will not have, so you have to pay for it seperately, which is a pain in the butt. I found this happened with math the most - I had it in Linear Algebra I and in Differentials

BUT, for the most part, used textbooks are going to be exactly as good as the new textbooks, especially if it's the same edition, so there is no reason not to buy used, unless you know thay your course is going to use the regiistration code that comes with a new textbook

Most of you have already mentioned all of the places that I would have as well, like Undercovers. Awesome place that recently opened....or I just found recently. I'm going to also say that mac-central.com is a really great website for buying books from upper years. *I don't know if I'm allowed to mention them cause I dunno if this website is competing with them or something* It's basically macinsiders but was formed in 2005 when I first came here, so there's a lot of upper years selling books. I know I sold all my books there. Good luck

Oh yeah, make sure you are going to actually use the book. So many times I have shelled out hundreds of dollars and never actually touching the books I bought. However, it probably won't be much of an issue for first years.

haha.

no, you can mention mac-central. we are different clubs (ie we serve different purposes), so we're not in competition with each other