Student Success: Renting Textbooks

I don't know about you, but I once had almost $1,000 in textbooks alone my first semester of nursing school!  I mean first tuition costs, then hundreds of dollars worth of additional fees, and for some reason, my university decides to take my $500 book allowance I get from my scholarship.  And the costs are going up yearly.

Now, universities, colleges, and various online vendors are offering book rentals, but Campus Book Rentals makes it easy.  Type in the book that you need and you can add the book you want to rent to the cart and voila, you save 40-90% on your textbooks!

An Example from My College Experience

Here is an example of a book that I use frequently in nursing school:

The list price is about $150, and currently brand new on Amazon you can get it for $116 or you buy used (however I have had a few problems buying used in the past with people overselling the condition of the book).  Or, you can also rent it.

Campus Book Rentals Program

An advantage of the Campus Book Rentals (versus renting through your university), is that you can change your return date.  This flexibility can be such a great feature!  If you only need it for a few weeks (say to study for the final exams with), then you can change the date and your rental price decreases since you won't be renting it for an entire semester.  

Campus Book Rentals also let's you highlight in the book, which could be really helpful for classes that you really need to take seriously, like, for instance, my medical-surgical nursing course for me.  If at the end of the rental period you want to keep the book, you just pay the difference!  That might become helpful if you kind of exhausted some funds at the beginning of the semester paying for tuition and books.

But the best part?  Free shipping both ways!  So $51 for this 1,000+ page nursing text book and I don't have to pay for shipping to return the heavy book?  I am sold.  If only I had know this back when I bought the book!  Some books just don't resell as well, you know?

The RentBack Program

Lastly, if there's a book that you want to keep but it's currently just collecting dust, you can participate in their RentBack program, where you can be the person renting out the textbooks to other students and collect money in return!  Um, awesome!  I have quite a few books that I want to keep (I may be a textbook hoarder), but am currently not using because they are from another semester.

For more information (like how there is a 30-day full refund for, say, if you dropped a class) on CampusBookRentals.com, you can view the video below:

As you now know (if you didn't already), I am a nursing student, so I was particularly attracted to the fact that Campus Book Rentals is partnered with Operation Smile.  What that means is that with each book rented, Campus Book Rentals makes a donation to Operation Smile.

For 30 years, Operation Smile has been a children's medical charity helping to fund and provide resources to repair facial deformities such as cleft lips and cleft palates.  This dramatically improves the quality of life of beautiful children all around the world whose families otherwise couldn't afford these surgeries that might not be as "important" as, say, heart surgery.  However unrepaired cleft lip and cleft palate could have long term health effects other than just self-esteem issues.  Complications include lifelong speech and feeding issues, and 1 out of 10 infants born with a cleft disorder will not see their first birthday (source).  So by saving money, you are helping make a difference.

For more information on Operation Smile and Cleft Lip & Palate, click on any of the following links:

• FAQs about Cleft Lip and Cleft Palate
• Operation Smile Fact Sheet
• Clefting: A Global Crisis

Disclaimer: Campus Book Rentals reached out to me about the prospect of working together to promote the book rental program and Operation Smile.  I, however, accepted the partnership because I have been a university student for several years now and have seen the positive shift towards renting textbooks.  I also feel a calling to pediatrics nursing and recognize the importance of the role that Operation Smile can play in the lives of children and their families.  I can attest that this post was 100% written by me and that this is all my truthful opinion.  Thank you.