Buying or renting books....

[anilechim]

Hi everyone,

This coming fall semester, I will be taking A&P I. The books are extremely expensive and I'm not in a great place financially right now. I decided to spend on the lecture book, which cost me around $275, and I still have to purchase an access code for around $140. I figured that this might be a good book to have for future reference, perhaps even next semester for A&P II.

My question is whether or not I can get away with just renting the lab manual for the lab portion of A&P I? This would save me greatly, but if I will somehow need this book for future reference, I'll suck it up and spend the money.

Any heads up would be a huge help to me as this is my first class with a lab involved and I'm pretty clueless.

Thanks so much in advance.

[pmabraham, BSN, RN]

While I purchased the AP book (we use the same book for AP 1 and 2) along with the lab material, looking back, I would have been better off renting everything. Since I've been in the nursing program, I've not had to go back to the AP book or lab material for anything as what AP we need to know is covered in our nursing books.

[Buyer beware, BSN]

Would someone who has these materials PM this student and send them off to him/ her for postage. Especially if as per usual they are stowed collecting dust.

And after you do, PM me, cause I sure want to feel better about my dear colleagues these days.

[38pearl]

I didn't rent textbooks until the last few semesters of nursing school and it was absolutely the best decision I made. I wish I rented each and every single book in pre-nursing classes and nursing school. In fact, sometimes the school library has copies of textbooks that you can go there and borrow theirs to read if you're going to the library anyway, that can be a great option. I definitely recommend renting over buying!

[emmjayy, BSN, RN]

Be very aware with renting nursing school books that you may be required to use the code in them to access online learning material, and once the code has been used, no one else can use it. It sucks, but a one-time use code is now the way for sellers to ensure that people have to keep on buying new. I recently had my orientation and a bunch of students were very disappointed to discover that the textbooks they rented or bought used were partially useless because my school requires use of some online materials associated with the textbooks that require a code to access.