Student Sessions: How, and Where I Buy My Textbooks

Hey y'all! I don't really have a weekend recap for today, it was a pretty low key weekend which is a-ok with me I'm just enjoying not having much to do since school starts back in a week! YIKES. Which is why I am here to start a new series of posts that I will be sharing on my blog that are tailored specifically to college students. Since I am a college student, and a junior I feel like I have accrued some life  college experience and I want to share it here in my little internet space so that hopefully I can help out some other college students. So I introduce to you: Student Sessions!

Now the student sessions posts are not going to be on a specific day of the week or anything. They will just pop up whenever I have something that I geared toward students that I want to share. So since I am starting school again in a week I am currently in the midst of purchasing my textbooks. Now I long ago learned that unless it is a book that is specific to your school (as in a book the school themselves produced like a lab book) you have a ton of other options for purchasing and or renting your textbooks for the semester. I use to resources to help me make sure that I am getting the best deals possible on my books whether I rent or buy. 1st I use http://www.slugbooks.com/ . And what this website does is by taking the ISBN number or name of the book for the list your college gives you will immediately tell you the price of your book from different retailers, Amazon, Half.com, Abe Books, & Chegg, and will show you which website has it for the cheapest price and if its cheaper to buy or rent. NOTE: Most English and Science Textbooks will be cheaper to RENT. This is because they are generally larger books. Unless it is a book that you think you will possibly use again (as in a professor says that it will help in another class in your major) RENT it. So once I start finding out prices I start plugging them into an excel spreadsheet (in my screenshot I'm using numbers for mac, but excel works just as well)

I know this is probably a little hard to read but if you right click and open it in a new tab it should be easier to read.  So this is my spreadsheet for this upcoming semester. I started out by listing my classes, and then underneath each class the name of the book or books required. then in the next column I put the ISBN # for easy reference, and then in the next column the author so that I could make sure that I was getting the right book. Then using Slug Books and my college bookstore online, I list the prices, along with whether the price that I listed was buying or renting. Renting is color coded with green, and buying with blue. So once I have all my prices in, I go through and use yellow to denote the lowest price option for that book. Then normally I would have my total calculation for my books on my spreadsheet by I am new at working with Numbers and I am still figuring some thing out. But my total came out about a whole $200 dollars cheaper than what it would have cost me to buy them solely at my college bookstore. Now I do want to list another option for renting textbooks that I have had a good experience with but isn't listed on here, because Slug Books doesn't list it, but it has been a good go to when I couldn't find a book on one of these websites. Barnes & Noble, they actually have a pretty good system and pricing and renting books but they still don't have as many books available as the ones that I used.  

Who doesn't want to save $200 dollars on their textbooks?! 

I suggest you try it out, cause it really works!