1st Year Textbooks (1 Viewer)

[Dan895]

Hey people,
Is there anyone out there that could point me in the direction of where I could buy some textbooks for Maths 1131, 1231 and Phys 1131 and 1231.
I know uni is still quite a bit away but it couldn't hurt.

Thanks

 

[Baldy-95]

I wouldn't mind knowing either. Free bump!

 

[D94]

You won't 'need' a textbook for those courses. The UNSW bookshop will have course packs for those courses. For maths, it will include tutorial problems, course notes and past papers. For physics, it will include a lab manual and tutorial problems.

You won't be able to see it now, but when the textlist is available, the UNSW bookshop will list the recommended books: http://www.bookshop.unsw.edu.au/textlist.html

It will probably list actual textbooks, but it's not really worth buying.

 

[Dan895]

Yeah that makes sense, when I'm down for the co-op interviews would it be worth going to the bookstore and asking about a pack, or are they not made up until next year?

 

[OMGITzJustin]

hold your horses.. they aren't available yet

 

[D94]

Definitely won't be available now. You will need to wait until next year, the week before O-Week, or even O-Week. You could have a look, but I highly doubt anything for next year will be available, because it's still exam time and course convenors (if they have even been chosen) need to write up course outlines that specify which textbooks are recommended/required.

These were the tutorial problems for 2012, but I would say it would be similar for 2014: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B29Lm2UM3hSaRXdZYlNNTG13VkU&usp=sharing

 

[Dan895]

Thanks for that. They will definitely help if I have the urge to do some maths in the next 3-4 months.

 

[HeyJes]

Go Facebook and search for the 'textbook exchange' group for UNSW students. It's a big community and there are tons of cheap second hand textbooks in exchange!
I bought mine there !!

 

[fizzbylightning]

such eagerness is good

 

[plutonium-238]

Go Facebook and search for the 'textbook exchange' group for UNSW students. It's a big community and there are tons of cheap second hand textbooks in exchange!
I bought mine there !!

My rule of thumb, wait 3 weeks into uni, if your lecturer tells you to buy the textbook, then buy the textbook since exams questions are most likely to come from there. The UNSW 2nd hand bookstore will have plenty of advertisements where students sell off their old textbooks at much lower prices than the bookstore (most are in good condition and should be the same edition as required by the course), unless you want to fork out hundreds of dollars on textbooks, it's just not worth it. You can always borrow the textbooks from the library, just keep renewing the textbook before they expire. Good thing about UNSW is that there's no fines if books expire (unless someone has reserved it) and you can renew it as much as you want before semester ends.

Maths would have booklets rather than a textbook and comes in 3 parts; question booklet, exam booklet and course information booklet. Most lecturers go through the question booklet in lectures so it's highly important you purchase this at the UNSW bookstore. PHYS has a textbook but refer back to what I wrote before, wait 3 weeks before deciding whether to buy it.

 

[ifrit112]

many people use/share e-books, but do not buy any textbooks until your first week of lectures.
Your lecturer would advise what books are necessary in the first lecture. You may find that some are just recommended, or supplementary - meaning for additional reference you can go to those books. Many people never need to, and if you ever do there is usually a copy in the library you could borrow for an hour or so, just to look/photocopy that particular topic.

No one will actually force you to get textbooks (it is not high school where you have to come prepared to class with all your books every day). I know quite a few that didn't bother with textbooks at all, since a lot of information is available on the internet anyway.