Science degrees and buying text books

Murtle

Nab them from the library as soon as you can when you start, or look around in local libraries to the Uni. My local library has loads of student course texts that help support the local Uni and night schools in the area. But if you want to buy them, then look for second hand as they will be cheaper, there was a uni books website mentioned on here ages ago, might be worth a look. Also place wanted ads around Uni or somewhere previous students can see, if they don't need them they may be willing to sell them....But in answer to your question, ALL courses that I am aware of have set text books that are required. Only not ALL students buy them, or at least don't buy them all, if you feel you need them then that's fine, but many science degrees and other degrees have other equipment that needs to be purchased which for safety reasons is more important then text books that can be borrowed from the library! My degree, I graduated 7 years ago, required in excess of £350 of basic equipment before text books!m

studentphil

Murtle wrote:

Nab them from the library as soon as you can when you start, or look around in local libraries to the Uni. My local library has loads of student course texts that help support the local Uni and night schools in the area. But if you want to buy them, then look for second hand as they will be cheaper, there was a uni books website mentioned on here ages ago, might be worth a look. Also place wanted ads around Uni or somewhere previous students can see, if they don't need them they may be willing to sell them....But in answer to your question, ALL courses that I am aware of have set text books that are required. Only not ALL students buy them, or at least don't buy them all, if you feel you need them then that's fine, but many science degrees and other degrees have other equipment that needs to be purchased which for safety reasons is more important then text books that can be borrowed from the library! My degree, I graduated 7 years ago, required in excess of £350 of basic equipment before text books!m

I know someone who is doing a computing degree and he has not had to buy any texts, all course material comes printed by the uni free, and he has never had to buy any other equipment.

studentphil

I have got my 200 quid set aside for books anyway

cupid_s

see in science we don't really have tutorials. if we do they're going over an important published paper which everone can print of web of science for free.

the text books in science are generally more expensive than other subjects. i bought one for £99 as i said in another post. but i didn't need to do this but the book was so nice and big and pretty. The main book i had to buy that i used for lots of different modules was £50 and everyone had to buy this. i bought quite a few others but some people only bought that one and did fine.

in the first and second year most modules we did were related. i did several biochemistry modules so most of the basic info for all of those was in one book. and in the third year textbooks are completely useless. And the reading list consists entirealy of journal articles which you just print out.

in our library all set texts for modules are kept in the library - otherwise why make then set texts?

and there's always at least on reference copy of each book we need in the library that no-one can take out so it's always there to photocopy from.

anewman

If you have difficulty using your own library, ask your university's library about using other universities libraries - if there are any near you. They should give you a card which lets you go into other university libraries for browsing access only, but when I did this I had access to the photocopiers too so just photocopied the bits I needed.

Regarding Texts, in the first year there were recommended texts for Psychology (which is a science ). I bought more books in the first year and just didn't bother buying so many in the second and third year as I got a feel of what amount of books were absolutely necessary to buy.

studentphil

How long is a science paper you may have to read in the upper years?

cupid_s

they can vary
papers can be as short as 4 pages (quite rare though)

we had one review to read which was over 100 pages long

average was probably 20 pages (remember journal text is much smaller than books so a 20 page journal is about 8000 words)

we had to read 80 of these per module

melancholly

studentphil wrote:

How long is a science paper you may have to read in the upper years?

good question!!
it depends on the journal - whether it's a review article or a rapid communication of an important recent result. and by your third year, general text books often aren't specific and/or recent enough to give you the info you need.

when i graduated i had a foot high pile of papers to recycle - and with university rip-off printing and photocopying prices that worked out as a lot of money! i bought some books, 4 - which i think cost me £150ish..... and 2 of them i barely used (science text books of 1400 pages do not come cheap!)
and trust me, it's not just philosophy where you need to read things on multiple occasions to understand them!!

if you are finding that you cannot get hold of the key texts, there should be a student representative in your year for your course who will go meetings with staff and can ask for more library copies to be bought. i think addressing the issue specifically with your uni and your course may be more productive than comparing to other places/subjects.

studentphil

I am just interested in what goes on else where, I would say I have personally no problems with text books. Apart from I can never read all I should before giving up in a very down heartend way. I do not think a science degree sounds any less of a pressure on the reading front than a Arts degree though.

cupid_s

studentphil wrote:

I am just interested in what goes on else where, I would say I have personally no problems with text books. Apart from I can never read all I should before giving up in a very down heartend way. I do not think a science degree sounds any less of a pressure on the reading front than a Arts degree though.

how much reading do you have to do for your degree (say per 20 credit module)

is it a lot more than science

and how many hours do you have in uni a week?