Book lists up (2 Viewers)

[spillargroove]

On the topic of textbooks, how much are new students are expected to spend purchasing these in general? The University does realise we will have to spend a considerable of money..?

 

[LaraB]

On the topic of textbooks, how much are new students are expected to spend purchasing these in general? The University does realise we will have to spend a considerable of money..?

yes - all unis are well aware of how ridiculously expensive books are but i guess it's not really their fault.. blame the authors/publishers..

nice coordinators do custom publications coz they're smaller and leave out the crapy ou don't need and cheaper...


depending on how expensive your course is, per semester you'd be looking at from as little as $150 to as much as $600 on textbooks if you're in say... 4th year law or 3rd year 'insane finance related business" course since you have 4 units a semester and each unit has usually one or 2 books each at about $120-$150 per unit...

then - add photcopying and printing (and library fines 4 those lazy ppls) - then its between $50 and $400 more per semester... eg - you do tute presentations in a lot of units... you have to print powerpoints @$1.10 per page.. and then you gotta print out handouts for all the students in the class - so you could be up to $30 already for one stupid 10 minute task...

the uni is well aware o f these costs - if you get n ice teachers, they try to minimise these costs by not making you produce endless handouts, or photocopy whole chapters of books...

likewise - they may copy and place on the library web site resources for you instead of making you potocopy the library books...

that said though.. there are other ways to cut costs buy 2nd hand textbooks, sell em once you've finished with them if you won't be needing them anymore.. don't buy all the 'recommended' texts unless you are told they are vital coz usually you're not gonna use em much and you'd be better off photocopying the relevant chapters from the library copies..

make sure you get a coop membership card coz that's an autmoatic 10% saving... use online sites like lawbooks.com coz they have anywhere from 10-25% off books..

although i know its not legal... a lot of people if they have a friend in their classes - one person will buy the book, and they will photocopy the relevant chapters for the other person and then split the cost... because you don't necessarily use all the chapters of your text.

it is a lot of money compared to school but put it this way - when your course can cost up to $40,000+ so its a lot but it's nothing in the scheme of things... not much of a positive thought lol but it makes it seem a little less

 

[spillargroove]

But for first year students like me, we should purchase our books at Co-Op yes? A bit off topic, where could I have a look at images of the different UWS campuses?

 

[LaraB]

But for first year students like me, we should purchase our books at Co-Op yes? A bit off topic, where could I have a look at images of the different UWS campuses?

not necessarily..

look at the co=op site and get the names of the books but you don't "have to" get the books there... just if you're going to get them elsewhere - make sure its the same book so check title, author, publisher, publishing co, edition - edition is really important! because it may be more or less the same, but the unit outlines are written with the recommended book in mind so it makes it very hard to follow classes.

although - you probably still need to go to co-op coz most units will have one of either a unit reader or a custom book of some kinds that only the uni coop's sell.

far as images - go to the uws website and have a look around - there are various photos in differnet sections.. don't know if there is a 'Photo" section and what it is called .. just have a look around the site...

or you can always google it - coz there's been plenty of articles done on uws that would be around on non-uni sites like newspaper sites and stuff

 

[Jacks]

Following on from that if you are going to buy your books from somewhere other than the co-op check the ISBN (the International Standard Book Number) Doing this, and making sure that the one on the co-op website (listed under the book's details) and the one you purchase correlate will ensure that you get the right version of any title. Though as Lara pointed out there may be some which are not available elsewhere so perhaps going to the co-op is just easier and safer...provided we're talking about the same amount of money of course