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Reading Materials

For those about to start an Access course, have you already gone ahead and bought some books for some/all of the subjects you're studying or are you waiting until you start and are advised on what to buy?

I haven't bought anything yet and was going to wait for them to suggest... I don't want to pay out 20+ per book incase I get the wrong one! :P
Don't pay full price for books.
Search on Amazon on click on 'used' for cheap second hand copies. Second hand textbooks and revision guides are cheaper at this time of year.
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At my interview, it was the English tutor doing it & he said what 2 of the books are that we'll need for English & suggested we read one over the rest of the summer. Managed to get it for free on Kindle. Will get the paperback version when I get the others. Can get Jane Eyre for £1.99 from Waterstone's. First place for the rest will be Amazon.
I would literally order them in class as they were mentioned in order to get the cheapest copies on abe or wherever.
I didn't buy any books for my access, everything I needed was available through the college library (both in book and electronic formats) or online. I wouldn't buy anything because you move through the topics quickly so could get expensive.


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Thanks for your replies guys!

I'll hold off for now, wait til I start class, if I do happen to need anything I'll definitely be using amazon.
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?p=55060993&highlight=libgen
I bought a number of books for each of my 3 subjects. On the plus side, it meant I had plenty of research material available for me to use at home whenever I wanted it. On the downside, it meant I spent more money than I needed to.

With the benefit of hindsight, I'd suggest putting your money into books that will continue to have value for you as you progress to uni. That's much easier to decide if one of your Access subjects correlates to what you want to study at uni!

I did Lit/Soc/Pysch at Access and I'm continuing with Lit at uni. Books I bought for Access Lit will be useful to me at uni. My Haralambos (Soc) and Gross (Psych) won't.

For subjects you're just doing at Access, I'd advise seeing if you can get by with college library resources. Ultimately, it depends on what works for you. You might prefer to buy a book for £10 than have to keep fighting each unit to get one of the few copies of a popular book from your library before everyone else nabs it.
(edited 8 years ago)
Good point Jimmy about only buying books that will be useful at uni. That does depend on college library having them available. I still have Haralambos from my BTEC so will use that for Sociology. I just have to figure out how to add notes to books on my Kindle.

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