College Preparation #6: Save Your $$$...and the trees

One of my biggest expenses in college my freshman year was books. I spent close to $1200 on them that first year. You DO NOT need to do that! Just do what I do now, buy international, or not at all.

There are international editions of books available that are much cheaper, and lighter than the American counterpart. They are in high quality color prints, and are softback. They say they cannot be sold in the US, which is not true. I buy mine on e-Bay usually, but they are all over the internet. However, MAKE SURE you get the high quality ones, you can get super cheap copies from China and India, but these are basically xerox copied black and white pages, and suck. The best part about buying these books, is you can usually re-sell them to other students for about the same price you paid for them (sometimes more) so you have nearly a 100% average recovery.

Another thing to look for is to make sure they say EVERYTHING in the book is the same, not just the passages, etc. because some books do not have the same example problems, and if you don't have the correct problems to work, in some classes, you will not do the correct homework. Be careful about it.

If you can't find an international edition, are afraid to buy them, or your book does not come in an international edition, try buying from other students. There is an entire website here at Michigan State dedicated to putting students in contact with other students for ads, books, and professor ratings (as well as other stuff) and I love it. There are other sites that let you get in touch with other students as well. If you must buy your books from the book store, do it, and then at the end of the semester, sell them to other students and get more than the book store will give you. They'll do it because they will pay less than the book store will charge them.

Be careful of professors who try to make money off their students. I had a professor ******* ******* who taught my Managerial Marketing class. He was an interesting guy, who was so ridiculously full of himself. Anyway, this isn't a critique of him as a professor; he owns a publishing company in Chicago (I checked it out, it is listed as one of his residences) and he "writes" a "new" book each semester, then requires it, and charges students $125. So he's making like 300 x $125 = $37,500 each semester (is my math correct?) Which makes me TERRIBLY mad. I wish I had known beforehand so I could save some money. My chapter ten also ended on a random word. It ends

"The nation's nonprofit sector generates amazing revenues every year and controls a"

Note: The name of this particular professor was blocked out to avoid any legal issues.