How many textbooks are required for your first semester?

Nursing Students Pre-Nursing

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I am starting nursing school in the fall and am anxiously awaiting my school's book list to be released. I have heard we need about $1800 worth of textbooks! Has this been anyone else's experience too? And any suggestions, besides Amazon and Half.com, on where to get good prices on textbooks? Thanks so much!

Katie71275, isn't it sad that only buying one extra book per quarter is a relief? I have never had to buy more than 1 book for a class at a time before nursing school and now that is a cheap quarter. :)

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If you can network with people who are ahead of you in the program, you may find that with certain books you can get away with one-edition-older than the edition on your syllabus. For example, I was told that my concept mapping text and my physical exam & assessment text would be OK one-edition-older. I saved 72% off the best used price on the current edition and 90% off the bookstore price on the new edition.

I've already compared my assessment edition with the current one and remarkably little has changed. Adding to my confidence that the recommendations on the assessment text are correct is the fact that this particular instructor tests exclusively from lecture material so that we only need to use the text to clarify something we didn't understand. I've met several people who never opened the book all semester (because they didn't need any clarification) and they still got good grades.

On the other hand, I was told that my drug guide and nursing diagnosis books really MUST be current edition and for the diagnosis book MUST be the specified author.

I know people in other programs who had good success with saving money by buying one-edition-older on some/most books, however, I've only been able to get feedback on part of the books for my specific program so I'm still trying to decide what I want to do about the others.

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I'm beginning an ADN program in the fall and while they've listed our books, only two are actually listed and the others are in a "bundle" that needs to be purchased from the bookstore. It doesn't list out the books so I can't compare pricing and our bookstore doesn't let you browse the text books. You give them your class schedule, they get your books, and you buy them. Tricky tricky....

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Lots of books, 8 books and some online pack thing! At orientation they said the books and online pack will together cost $600, which I thought was outrageous, but WHOA nearly two thousand??!! :eek: I go to community college so I don't know if that makes a difference but damn that is a lot of money. I hope that some of the textbooks will last you more than just that first semester... And our program director said that it is the norm for nursing books to only used for 1-2 years then they are updated, causing nursing students to pay big bucks for new books.

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I'm beginning an ADN program in the fall and while they've listed our books, only two are actually listed and the others are in a "bundle" that needs to be purchased from the bookstore. It doesn't list out the books so I can't compare pricing and our bookstore doesn't let you browse the text books. You give them your class schedule, they get your books, and you buy them. Tricky tricky....

you do have a few options here.

1) wait until someone other than you buys them and take a peek at what they have.

2) Be honest with the book store staff (not the manager, but anyone else) that you just want to take down the list. They would much rather do that than the paperwork for my next suggestion.

3) Ask what the return policy is. Because people's schedules change pretty frequently in colege, all of the schools i have gone to have a 10 day full return policy if you have not opened the celophane. If they have one, go in, put the books on a credit card, take down the list, check the prices on your smart phone or in the school library, and immediately return it if it is way overpriced. **I cannot say enough to verify the return policy before doing this**

4) email/call the program director's assistant and ask for a list. I have NEVER met an instructor that wants you to pay more unless they wrote the book! my instructors go out of their way to avoid sending us to the book store.

Good luck! and if you get the info make sure to share with your classmates if you can!

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I just pirate everything. Paid for my Asus Transformer and then some. I'd rather have gadgets than overpriced textbooks.

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