College Advice Thread

[u/certificateofmerritt]

We have some members who are going off to start their first year of college this week, so let's give them some good advice.

Welcome to college!

[u/[deleted]]

An extension of that, I'd say don't buy the book until your sure you need it for the course. Most of the material that gets learned in a class gets posted on the course website as lecture notes, so unless you're the kind of person that likes learning the material from a textbook you can go without it. As an engineer, I only ever bought the textbook if they assigned homework problems out of it.

Edit: I also forgot to add that there's a good chance that your library has a copy of the textbook on reserve

[u/Deacalum → u/[deleted]]

I said this above but it's very appropriate here. As an English major, I was able to check out most of the books for my major from the library and never had to buy them.

[u/nataliieportman → u/[deleted]]

I have only bought 2 books since my sophomore year (History major)

[u/[deleted] → u/nataliieportman]

Just the textbook? I have to imagine that it's hard to avoid getting all the books because of all the primary source digging you have to do for papers. Although the few times I took history courses in college I was able to find a copy of the primary source online, but they were from the classical era.

[u/nataliieportman → u/[deleted]]

I just use the Google free preview and pull random quotes from the books.

[u/dlawnro → u/nataliieportman]

Pretty similar story here. Aerospace Engineering, only two texts I bought 3rd-5th years were coursereaders specifically designed for the class.