buy or rent textbooks?

[puppypaws]

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hi,
I'm starting PT school this fall and just received my textbook list. To say the least, it's pretty long. To save money, I was thinking of renting the textbooks. From your past experience, would I be better off renting or buying? I was thinking I may want to buy the textbooks in case I need to reference them for future classes, or in case they are required for the part 2 portion of the class in spring semester.
Any insight would be great. Thanks.

 

[goyo1010]

hi,
I'm starting PT school this fall and just received my textbook list. To say the least, it's pretty long. To save money, I was thinking of renting the textbooks. From your past experience, would I be better off renting or buying? I was thinking I may want to buy the textbooks in case I need to reference them for future classes, or in case they are required for the part 2 portion of the class in spring semester.
Any insight would be great. Thanks.

A considerable portion of our book lists are used in other semesters, so I buy the books, as renting them for however many months will just cost the same. Also, they are good for future reference for the NPTE and working as a clinician--at least some are. Just try any site you can think of, amazon.com, textbooks.com, half.com/ebay.com, etc.

 

[Fiveoboy11]

Buy them. Don't think you won't need them after school. After you graduate if you have an area you know you want to practice in, then you can sell the ones back that don't apply as much or aren't as necessary. There are lots and lots of books that are helpful post grad to learn more and hone skills too (that you weren't exposed to in PT school), especially for the outpt ortho realm. So, don't think you should be done buying books after you graduate either.

 

[NewDPT31]

I honestly stopped buying them after my first year(with the exception of kendall MMT). If your school is like mine, everything is in the powerpoints. I just saved the ppts to my computer/printed them out. Everything else you can find on the internet or borrow from a classmate if you really have to. No sense spending 600 bucks a semester on books if you aren't going to actually read the assigned(and boring) reading(which the teachers summarize in ppts.

 

[DancerFutureDPT]

some libraries may have books on reserve (I believe our neuro textbook was), which was a nice way to save money. Or if you live with classmates, you guys can split the cost, or each buy one required book and share, etc.

 

[Litlwarrior08]

Good advice, wondering should I have my books on the first day of class or wait to see what the instructors are recommending? Students on the blogs are saying wait..........but I don't want to miss out if it takes a week to get books in from online. Gook list is ready and school starts in a month.

 

[elmcd77]

I bought all mine from Amazon in time to get them for school. I found that they were much less expensive that way, and I knew that Amazon's return policy made things really easy. I was happy to have mine on the first days of classes because I started using them right away and didn't have to go through the added hassle of express shipping or paying a premium at our university bookstore. You can always return them if the professor does not think you need them, but it's better to have them.