Course Materials

[DeeLovely79]

So we've had the moving costs thread, the groceries thread and now the course materials thread!

How much are guys spending on books, software etc for courses this semster? I already have $250 of required books for my statistics course in my cart at Amazon (yes there optional books for the course as well). I still need to purchase a Windows software upgrade ($60) so that can run SAS ($60) and I still have to purchase books for 3 other courses (most of which don't have course materials listed yet). I'm just hoping that my departmental aid and my fellowship to clear in time so I don't have to go the first week of class without books.

So how much are your materials going to cost? Will you have to pay for them yourself or is your department/program/scholarship covering the cost?

[Eigen]

Wow, your department doesn't provide license keys for SAS?

[DeeLovely79]

For use on my personal computer, no they are not providing statistical software for free. SAS direct download is $60 and NVIVO direct download is $150 (you have to pay extra if you want the actual CD). The sad part is I remember when the software was free back when I was pursuing my masters. I'm at a different institution now but I pretty sure my old school charges for the software now.

[BrokenRecord]

My department is covering tuition, health insurance and a living stipend. Thus far, I only have two required textbooks, none optional, which run me about $130 total from half.com. In terms of statistical software, I believe they may be covering that or at least giving us a few license keys for personal use, I'll know more about that during orientation.

[screamorange]

So we've had the moving costs thread, the groceries thread and now the course materials thread!

How much are guys spending on books, software etc for courses this semster? I already have $250 of required books for my statistics course in my cart at Amazon (yes there optional books for the course as well). I still need to purchase a Windows software upgrade ($60) so that can run SAS ($60) and I still have to purchase books for 3 other courses (most of which don't have course materials listed yet). I'm just hoping that my departmental aid and my fellowship to clear in time so I don't have to go the first week of class without books.

So how much are your materials going to cost? Will you have to pay for them yourself or is your department/program/scholarship covering the cost?

check out older editions of your textbook on amazon, your costs can be reduced by a lot. ask you profs tho, sometimes they are okay with you using older editions.

[wildviolet]

My grad school course materials will cost much less than my undergrad books (and that's because I was a science major and had to pay major bucks for those heavy tomes and their answer guides)!

[virion]

Fortunately my program has an extra educational stipend which can be used at any point for proper materials (no iPads allowed apparently). And as luck would have it, I own the text for this term. Most people seem to use their stipend on a laptop, or save it until their laptop breaks later on.

[TakeruK]

In the past two years, for course materials, I've spent:

$300 on textbooks

$50 on "supplies" (paper, pens, erasers, etc.)

$130 on printing and binding (coil) four copies of my draft thesis for submission to my committee

So $480/6 = $80 per semester on this stuff! Not too bad. The rule in most Canadian (and probably US) schools is that course materials are always paid for by the student -- a supervisor can't use his or her grant money to buy textbooks or print my thesis (which is a course) etc. Similarly, dues to scientific or professional organizations are paid by the student too -- I currently pay $57/year for memberships but that will probably increase as now I will want to be members in both Canadian and US versions of my organizations (but I can probably get some joint membership discount).

To save money on textbooks, definitely consider ordering from amazon or other online bookstores. Searching around has saved me tons of money. Also, my school library has access to all textbooks by Springer through some database subscription. So, we can download extremely low quality PDFs of some textbooks! You can also ask your instructor to put the book on reserve at the library so that only students in the course can borrow/access the book. Or, you can just keep borrowing the book and renewing your loan. You can also share the costs of a book with your officemates and just get one copy per office. Or, maybe an older student will lend you their copy if they aren't taking a course that needs it this semester. However, this works for courses outside of your field of interest that you have to take. For courses that are directly related to your work, sometimes the textbooks used are super helpful and it could be worth it to get your own copy! (Also, I am reluctant to say this, but you can also consider just not getting some books at all. Sometimes professors assign REALLY bad books and older students can warn you to save your money and don't bother. If a prof assigns two books that have overlapping material, I tend to just buy one. And I never ever buy optional books unless I know those books are important to my field.)

For all research (i.e. not course material) related stuff, it's paid for by my supervisor and/or department. My supervisor provided me with a desktop computer at my desk and in recent months, also his old laptop he used for teaching (I use it for presentations, etc.). Most people in the department that want to do work on a laptop usually get one from their supervisor, even if they already have their own personal laptop. For things that overlap both research and coursework (e.g. software licenses), since we need it for research, we consider its use to be primarily research and it's covered by supervisor/department.

Edited August 18, 2012 by TakeruK

[DeeLovely79]

check out older editions of your textbook on amazon, your costs can be reduced by a lot. ask you profs tho, sometimes they are okay with you using older editions.

These are the prices for the used versions! Most of the "older" edition (ie 4th vs 5th) books are from 10 years ago so they aren't worth the $20 purchase price.

[Dal PhDer]

Try abebooks, I find they are A LOT cheaper than Amazon.

Also, my university doesn't give out SPSS/SAS/STATA downloads to students, but faculty get them free. You might want to check out if this is the case at your university, and see if your advisor can help you out. I've copied the .exe file to my usb and gotten the access code from him and have it on all my personal computers.

I don't have course materials...but I did just recently spend $300 on books related to my topic. Background literature, some application textbooks, and user manuals. I consider it a personal cost as I made sure these were items I would use more than once!

[Chasely]

The nice thing I find about grad courses (in the sciences at least) is that as the material gets more concentrated, the likelihood of there being a suitable textbook diminishes. In my experience, this leads to professors copying the appropriate material from other sources and putting them together in a course packet (free of charge, of course). Of the 6 or so grad courses I've had so far, only two of them had a required textbook.

On a more unrelated note, to those who use SAS/SPSS: why do departments choose to use that software instead

[Dal PhDer]

In regard to statistics software...I think R will soon be the go to software ...it's free and you might want to try getting that and using it as your statistics software. A classmate recently took a stats class and that's the program they used. I imagine it'll be what a lot of departments shift to!

Also, I found that in graduate school textbooks are almost none existent for courses. As someone else said, it's often a course pack that is put together-I always had to buy them or photocopy the articles I couldn't find online. If you're looking to save money, I might ask for the reading list ahead of time, scope out what you can find online for free in terms of chapters and articles, and what you can't find, ask a classmate to borrow theirs and photocopy it!

[toasterazzi]

I got all but one of my textbooks from half.com. I work at the campus bookstore so I got a 25% discount on the other book. The grand total was probably like $120 for 9 books. I haven't really bought much in the way of supplies since I already had a backpack, pens, notebooks and folders. I just got some more ink for the printer/scanner I picked up last year on Black Friday I did get a desk though and that was like $45. I plan to get a nice desk chair as well, which will run me another $50-100 depending on which one I decide to go with.

As for software, I'm thinking about getting Scrivener eventually, but my school provides Endnote and Office for free, so I recently downloaded both of those.