How much did you pay for books your first year?

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I was just trying to get an idea of what to expect. Thanks!

Around $900 and I used amazon/half/and the bookstore

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Specializes in Emergency/Cath Lab.

2 G's and have not bought a book since first semester.

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It's not just books, add scrubs, jacket, scope, "nursing kit", shoes, ati and likely a few other things that will come up. It ran about $1500 my first semester.

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Specializes in Home Care.

I rent books from Chegg unless its a book I will need for future semesters or want to keep as reference. Otherwise I buy used books from nursing students ahead of me or online.

The only book I will buy new is an NCLEX prep book with cd. I haven't found the online material for textbooks to be very useful. Its easy to find free online study material.

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There is a law taking effect July 1, Federal Texbook Disclosure, which requires colleges to provide titles and isbn's of all books needed. This should greatly help the shopping elsewhere dilemma.

Really? that would be great. because my school book store says that they are not supposed to give the ISBNs. And we don't know ISBNs and the exact book title/edition unless we buy books from them( the book store web site gives very limited info about books) The books we need some times come in a bundle in a shrink wrap. so we have to buy the whole bundle. Can't return them either because they do not issue a full refund if the bundle has been opened :(

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I believe there is even a provision in this law that the bookstore must make bundled items available for purchase individually. I cannot wait to see it in action.

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Thanks everyone. I was going to buy my books used from a previous student and spend about $300. I guess that's not a bad deal at all!

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I paid over a $1000 for books and only used about 2-3 out of a list of about 7-8. I would definitely find out those that you really need to buy and one's you can rent from maybe the school or go without. I would also recommend buying them used from other students or Amazon.

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$1500 first sememster....we use most of them throughout the program...then 1 or 2 extra books a semester.....

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Specializes in Junior Year of BSN.

I spent $280 at various online book sources for the first semester book list. I would have came out to over $600 at the book store. Last semester I spent around $240 for what would have cost over $500 at the bookstore. Luckily the next two semesters, I have a thousand dollar book scholarship but I must use it at the bookstore but that's fine since I won't have to pay out of pocket.

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Spent $900.00 and the bundled package was actually cheaper than had I purchased it at half.com. I believe everything was published after 2008, so there isn't a great deal of used items yet. My classmates tell me it also comes with a bunch of "virtual classroom" codes that only come with the bundle. The good news is that after this I only have to purchase a syllabus from the bookstore every semester.

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I believe there is even a provision in this law that the bookstore must make bundled items available for purchase individually. I cannot wait to see it in action.

Now that would be awesome b/c sometimes those bundles have their own ISBN. To be able to break it down would be awesome.

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