It’s no surprise that college is expensive, but one cost that often surprises new students is textbooks. Believe it or not, your textbooks and digital course materials can be one of the most expensive payments you’ll make while in college. Textbooks can range from as little as $10 to more than $100! No matter how expensive your textbooks are, there are ways to save money.
The most common tip for buying textbooks? Hold off on making any purchases until after the first week of classes. This tip is common, and for good reason! Professors may allow older editions, which are often cheaper, or may have a digital copy available to you. Some classes may not use the listed text in class at all. Remember: just because it’s in the syllabus doesn’t always mean you’ll need it!
Another good way to know if the textbook is necessary for a class is to ask other students who have already taken the class. Forums like Rate my Professor and Rate my Courses may have notes from students that experienced the class. These reviews can be helpful but be careful, these ratings can be extremely biased, so use caution when taking their advice.
If you don’t know what textbooks you need, you can find out by checking the Ball State University Official Bookstore website. Through this website, you can input your class information, and it will give you a list of the course materials you need. The bookstore also offers price matching. So, if Amazon offers the textbook for cheaper than the bookstore, you can show a bookstore employee, and they’ll match the price! For more details about the price match policy, you can visit bsu.bncollege.com.
Ball State is also rolling out a new textbook affordability program called Ball State First Day. With this program, students receive course materials at a reduced cost, around $22.75 per credit hour or $341.25 for 15 credit hours, and are billed alongside tuition and fees. All students will be auto enrolled when they register for classes, but there is an option to opt out during the add/drop period. For any additional questions, visit the FAQ page at bsu.edu.
If you must buy textbooks, the most common way to save is renting them. The Ball State Bookstore located in the Arts and Journalism Building, offers rentals for both physical and digital copies. Keep in mind, some publishers offer digital renting for less than the bookstore.
Buying used books is another smart way to save money. Websites like Chegg, Half Price Books, ThriftBooks and CampusBooks are great websites for buying used books. If you would like a PDF of your textbooks, you can also look up your books on websites like Z-library, Internet Archive, the Wayback Machine or Academia.com. These websites offer free PDFs of textbooks; however, this is not always reliable.
Textbook hunting can be stressful and expensive, but if you’re patient, do your research and are willing to put in the work, you can save a significant amount.
