Do you have to buy all your books or are they online?

First, I would confirm whether or not your class requires you to purchase from the college book store. If not, check prices on various sites using the ISDN. Not only did I buy books cheaper online, I resold them for a higher price in some cases. I also bought books/supplements from students that took the class in the semester before me. But I would still check if I was required to buy from the bookstore. It was always important to get the exact edition that the instructor/professor listed and to make sure that any required disks were included in my online purchases.

my daughter was very successful buying used books from students the year before, check school selling sites, many were online, if you buy you can always sell when done and recoup some of your expenses

Hey Allie,

Not sure if you still need answers to this question, but Prashanth gave such a detailed answer!

I absolutely agree, textbooks are expensive for sure but there are ways that you can get them for cheaper. To add to what my fellow commenter was saying - you can definitely look up the books using their ISBN numbers - a lot of my college mates would buy from amazon for cheaper, or even split one textbook amongst a few individuals, and take turns making copies of the chapters. One year, we actually had someone who worked at the computing center that received free printing so that person would just scan all the pages and print multiple copies of the chapters we needed. That saved so much!

School libraries usually offer a copy of the required textbooks and you should be able to borrow them or at least access them when you need at the library. Sometimes professors also offer this option where you can borrow the book from them.

Lastly, I used an online book borrowing system called Chegg https://www.chegg.com/
I'm not sure how popular it is now, but at a super low cost, you can borrow the textbook itself for the semester and then return it at the end. Textbooks sometimes go for hundreds of dollars, but I believe I rented one for $15 and that saved me so much! Just remember to ship it back at the end!

Hope that helps!