College Textbook Mythbusters

With your final college preparations looming as spring moves into summer, a painful cost is about to enter your reality: college textbooks. I started SlugBooks.com because I wanted to make it easier for college students to save money on their textbooks; there are a lot of misconceptions at the beginning of college about the cost of textbooks and the cheapest places to get them. Here’s a list of common textbook-buying myths and our rebuttals to help give you a better understanding of the process and how to maximize your savings!

MYTH: “If you have financial aid, you always need to buy books from the campus bookstore!”

Wrong! Just because you received a loan doesn’t mean you have to overpay for textbooks. Many forms of financial aid allow you to get reimbursed if you provide proof of payment (like a receipt from Amazon). If your book is $100 at the bookstore and only $25 online (we see this happen all the time), it might be worth it to cough up the $25 now and get reimbursed later.

MYTH: “The bookstore is the only place that has the right books - if you shop online, you might buy the wrong ones.”

Incorrect! The bookstore is just as prone to ordering the wrong book as anyone - if you want to be 100% sure you are buying the right books, e-mail your professor. If you do decide to shop around online - all you need is the ISBN number of each book (a unique 10 or 13 integer code specific to the book). Websites like Amazon.com and Half.com allow you to search by that number and get you straight to your book. You may hear things from your college bookstores about how the internet is not trustworthy; conveniently, the bookstores have an extremely vested interest in discrediting online retailers - don’t fall for it.

MYTH: “I’m going to get a USED copy at the bookstore!”

USED prices are often deceiving. Yes, the bookstore’s USED prices are much cheaper than NEW prices, but pay attention to these two qualifiers. First, when the bookstore has used books, there can be a pretty limited supply, so there’s no guarantee you’ll be paying the lower price! Second, we’ve seen occasions where the campus bookstore features a USED price for a book, even though they have no plans to receive any used books; in these cases, everyone is forced to buy at the NEW price. This usually happens because the bookstore has two different people ordering books and pricing books and these two folks aren’t always on the same page (in other words, this deceptive practice is not intentional). Bottom line: if you want a shot at getting a used book at the bookstore, plan on getting as early as possible, and confirm with the bookstore that they’re actually going to have used books!

MYTH: “The bookstore is always more expensive.”

False! Every website out there says “we have the cheapest textbooks, we’re cheaper than the bookstore”, but sadly there is no black and white answer to this question. It always depends on the book. Yes, the bookstore can be expensive, but sometimes ordering at the bookstore actually makes a lot of sense. People buy from the bookstore for a lot of legitimate reasons: it’s easy, it’s convenient, and on occasion they have the best price. Based on the numbers we’ve crunched, the campus bookstore is most often the lowest cost option for small, cheap paperbacks used in liberal arts classes - for these books, the prices online just aren’t that much cheaper, plus you have the occasional shipping cost to add onto online orders. Bottom line: anytime you are paying more than $20 for any book, it’s a good idea to check online; for books less than $20, the bookstore is probably your best bet.

MYTH: “I can’t order online because shipping will take too long!”

There are precautions you can take to make sure shipping isn’t an issue. First, ordering as early as possible is always a great tip. If you need your book really fast, order from a big rental site like Chegg or BookRenter – both of these companies are growing aggressively and they are maniacally focused on satisfying college students - they will do everything in their power not to disappoint! Online marketplaces like Amazon and Half are also very quick these days – the seller’s location is always a part of the listing information, so if you pick a seller located closer to you, you’ll have your book sooner! Another trick - check out sites that offer eBooks (Amazon Kindle, CourseSmart) – they usually provide an online version of the first chapter for free, so you can start reading your book immediately for free!

With everything going on at the beginning of your college experience, saving on textbooks may seem like a lot of work - but with a little effort, the savings really start to add up! Everyone ends up figuring out their personal favorite savings strategies, but the advice in this article should lay out a nice framework for monster savings.

Special Series Spotlight: Scholarship Stories

Scholarships are about as numerous as students themselves, and that’s why we’ve been curating a series of personal stories about the scholarship experience: searching, applying, deciding and of course… winning.

What we learned is that oftentimes, scholarship recipients didn’t think they’d win — for a number of reasons! Financially, extra-curricular-wise or simply because they felt they were too average. And many of them were happy to have been wrong. As one writer put it: My parents believed in me, but with all the other people applying, I did not think that I was going to win any.

Here are some highlights from the BetterGrads “College 101 Blog” Scholarship Stories special series:

Study Abroad Awards
Be persistent in seeking out the right resources, explore how you can enhance your learning internationally, and start turning your dreams into reality. I promise: you will be glad you did.
Sam Lim
Fulbright Scholar
Berlin, Germany

A Little Time Can Go A Long Way
You never stop having to apply for things, whether it’s more scholarships down the road for graduate school or the sometimes-endless search for gainful employment during and after school. Why not learn now how to best present your accolades and merits now?
Annemarie Moody
ASU Sun Devil Scholarship, Phoenix Press Club Scholarship, Sarada Robbins Scholarship and Joe W. Milner Scholarship

Ask And You May Receive
Everyone knew that I could do it, but I had to have faith in myself. Now, nearing the end of my first year of college, I am so glad that my parents pushed me.
Michael Roppolo
Bene Emeritus Sal Marasa Memorial Scholarship Award; Haverstraw Elks Lodge #887 Award; Rambling Raider Newspaper Award; English Advanced Placement Award; Social Studies Department Award, etc.

Keep Applying, Even After You’re Already In College
I honestly didn’t think I would end up getting the scholarship. Weren’t there tons of middle-class students who had more compelling stories than me?
Donna Reish
Associated Student Government Scholarship

Be Yourself
What I encourage students to do is to write essays about activities that matter to them. If experiences aren’t important to the writer, then they shouldn’t be written about.
Arie Ganey
Board of Trustees Scholarship

Thanks to all of our guest writers and staff who contributed to this series, and congratulations to all scholarship recipients! And for those who have applied for scholarships but have yet to receive a check, we encourage you to keep with it until the right award comes your way.

Introducing the College Prep Club

Last Fall, student participants in the BetterGrads pilot eMentoring Program at Granada High (Livermore, CA) formed a new club on campus unlike any other. The College Prep Club was designed to encourage students - 2400 in all - to see college as an attainable goal.

Since its inception, the College Prep Club 2012 (with “2012″ signifying the year members will graduate from high school and begin college) has significantly improved the college-going culture on campus.

The College Prep Club has been involved in several college-themed activities, including SAT study sessions and College Planning “Expo” nights. Recently, students initiated the Pennant Project, for which club members collect pennants from Granada teachers’ alma maters and ask them about their experience there. The pennants will be displayed in the Granada High library and career center with the intent of further promoting college-going culture by connecting specific schools with students’ teachers.

As part of the BetterGrads Program, members are paired with a BetterGrads mentor, with whom they regularly communicate via phone calls, text messages, e-mails, video chats and monthly group calls with all mentors and mentees. Each month is dedicated toward learning about a different important aspect of college. Curriculum topics have included how to write resumes, how to evaluate which types of colleges are good fits, and, most recently, how to identify personal strengths in scholarship applications. A special series on the College 101 Blog entitled “Scholarship Stories” complemented last month’s curriculum.

For more information on the College-Prep Club 2012 and the BetterGrads eMentoring Program at Granada High, please read our latest press release (PDF). Visit our “Are we at your school?” page to bring the BetterGrads Program to your school today.

Scholarship Stories: Keep Applying, Even After You’re Already in College

There’s a lot of emphasis on applying for college scholarships before you head off to college, and that’s certainly important. But did you know there are plenty of scholarships available to students who are already a few semesters in to their college experience? In fact, you may not even be eligible for certain institutional scholarships until you can demonstrate that you’ve maintained a certain GPA for two consecutive semesters at your university.

The first scholarship I ever received was the Associated Student Government (ASG) Scholarship from Texas State University, San Marcos. It was a total fluke that I found out about it, too. Up until my junior year, I never lived in the dorms. Instead, I commuted an hour to and from school and worked every other day in a different city, so I didn’t have much time to get involved with anything on campus. But around my junior year, I moved to an apartment near Texas State, worked closer to school and started to get involved on campus in different ways, including writing for the student newspaper.

One day when I was waiting to meet with an advisor, I thought I would ask the lady at the desk if there were any scholarships available for current students. She said, “Absolutely!” and brought me a massive three-ring binder full of scholarship information. I was flabbergasted and immediately kicked myself for not looking into this sooner in my college career. Read More

Scholarship Stories: Ask, And You May Receive

Senior year means many things to many high school students (prom night, senior ditch day, college plans, etc.). Many students mistakenly see it as the easiest year of their high school career. For many parents, it means thinking about the future financially. Seniors often don’t think about applying for scholarships because they feel it’s a waste of time, and there’s only a small percentage of who will win.

I was no exception. To me, senior year was all about preparing for college. It meant (still) getting good grades, studying for hours for the SATs and ACTs, and getting into the college of my dreams: Rochester Institute of Technology. No way did I think that I was going to have to make time to write several dozen applications for scholarships alone.

My parents had other plans for me, however. They had me apply for every scholarship that I was eligible for. They made it explicitly clear that they weren’t going to help me pay for college unless I got some scholarships. Be it because of my Italian descent, my various disabilities, or my major… if there was a scholarship, I had to go for it.

Every month, my mom would force me to go hunt for scholarships. It wasn’t that it was hard to find them (my school had several applications available in the guidance office) or even that they were hard (many scholarships used a similar topic), but I just felt that it was a waste of time. My parents believed in me, but with all the other people applying, I did not think that I was going to win any. Read More