This is usually not applicable to Arts courses (Philosophy, Psychology, Law – I was always required to do a lot of reading), but sometimes much cheaper course notes are enough. It’s a good idea to check with instructors and upper year students who took the course before.

My campus will let you return books within the 2nd and 3rd week of classes, however if they had shrink wrap they must be unopened. Don’t open these books, and keep you books in good condition until the second week of class. Ask you teacher explicitly if you will be using the textbook and what for.

I returned about $400 worth in textbooks this semester. My Java book was “supplementary” material to read optionally, and since I’ve read better Java books and the online content is enough, I returned it. $137 tax. My Advanced VB book was going to be used for optional excersizes. Well, I wouldn’t do them anyways, and if I needed to I would just look off a friends. That was about $110. My System Configuration II book was a textbook packaged with a lab manual. Now, we need the lab manual, but not the textbook. So I returned it and got my money back, and I’ll be sharing the book with my friend and pay him like a third of the book price. He’s reliable for labs so if one day he doesn’t show, I can usually partner up with someone else. That book was around $120.

They only book I kept was XML. Our assignments were right out of the book (some of them), and besides, XML is new to me and the book would be a good reference to keep.

Think smart! Many CS courses can be learnt online!

I’d like to point out as well that it’s probably difficult to find a pirated copy of your textbook, unless it’s pretty popular. It’s worth a try if you are willing to risk the consequences. And I’m not condoning piracy either .

Besides, it simply does not run natively on my OS X or Linux computers.

secondly using discount s/w from MS

you see MS is offering $60 for its MS Office 2007 Ultimate Edition!!

To expand on cooking, get a rice maker! Rice is perhaps the best bang for your buck out there. Also, soya beans are great – cheap, and packed with more protein than anything I know. You can get them canned or in a bag. For recipes, the wonderfully named Epicurious.com is an invaluable resource.

One of the most important things to remember is not to sacrifice your education to save a few bucks. Certainly, eating ramen and KD every day will cost you next to nothing, but if you’re sick for finals, you might end up having to pay $500 to upgrade/retake a course. The same goes with textbooks – sure, the library can be great, but at the end of term if someone else has the same idea as you, you could be in trouble.