University chemistry textboooks

Hi, I will be studying Chemistry at UCL hopefully in September and was wondering if there are any current UCL chemistry students (or any chemistry students at any uni) who could recommend which textbooks to get second-hand. Also, if there is anyone out there who has recently graduated, please let me know if you have any spare textbooks that I can buy from you.
Thank you in advance xx

Hey there,
I'm a recent grad and would say that there is usually a list of books your uni might recommend for your course or for your modules.
I'd always advise against buying them because the real material is the lecture notes/workshops/precious exam qs. The library usually has a few copies and if you need it you can just go borrow it or even browse it for a bit. Then you can save money and time this way. Also usually if you get some issues getting things from the library, you can raise it to your librarian and they will literally just buy more copies.
I made the grave error of buying the list of books recommended for first year chemist's and I literally hardly opened some of them. I've still got a clayden, chemistry cubed, housecroft and sharpe inorganics textbook all at home not sure what to do with them. They're from 2017 so not sure if they are any good to you. I'm also not sure how economical it is to post these heavy things but since I do need to get rid of them, let me know if ur interested lel
Anyways best wishes and if you're not sure which books, ask your course lead member of staff!
Cheese

@CheeseIsVeg may be able to make some general recommendations I've heard the chemistry^3 book and "the art of writing organic reaction mechanisms" are often recommended generally!
In terms of buying textbooks: don't. Any textbooks you may need to reference will be available in the libraries at UCL (there are quite a few...), and typically in the UK outside of language classes for students on those kinds of degrees, your modules won't follow any one particular textbook and so the core reference material will be the lecture notes, and you will just dip in and out of whichever textbooks you find preferable to add detail to what you've covered from the lectures.
As textbooks are very expensive, very awkward to move flat with repeatedly, and usually altogether unnecessary, you'll usually be better served with using the library resources. Better at least to wait until you've started the course and can gauge whether you really need a textbook (as it may be sometimes that you start wanting to refer to a particular textbook so much for so many modules you'd rather just have your own copy) and only buy it when you know you'll get value out of it, than buy a bunch of expensive blocks of paper that may end up serving as nothing more than decoration (or in my case in a different subject - language based even (!), two of them making a stand for my monitor at home...).

Also, whilst we are on the topic of university, how do you revise and take notes? Is it different to sixth form? Also, when exams come up, are there past papers you can access, or does it depend on the professor?

Hey sorry for the late reply, I blame jet lag
Great question!
This obviously depends on how you work / learn best!
It might be good to start with how teaching tends to work in a chemistry degree.
You will normally have lectures in each of your modules and these are usually 1 hour long.
It depends on your lecturer, but they often post copies of the notes (maybe with some blank spaces to fill things in), a few days before the scheduled lecture and you can either get those up on a device or print them.
(I like to print mine and then scribble notes on them but I've seen all sorts done!).
Other teaching methods involve workshops / Q&A, which is more you go to the session, get given some questions to attempt then and then if you're stuck you ask for help from the teaching member of staff present. The Q&A is usually a bit more audience-focussed, so you can ask anything you were unsure about or to go over specific questions/past paper content.
In terms of comparing to 6th form, kinda depends how you learn!
I find it difficult to memorise things, so what I did was after the lecture, I'd have these scribbled notes and I would write the entire set of notes in an A5 notebook. I did this for each module. When it came to exam time, I condensed these notes into flash cards to test myself!
E.g. if you're a visual learner you might be better doing more diagrams/mind maps.
The lectures are also sometimes recorded so you can actually watch them again - can be super helpful
Past papers are usually available. Note that if the module is new, there is often only 1 past paper (the sample past paper, to see what an exam would look like).
Don't think it depends on the professor in terms of past papers, may depend on Uni policy e.g. I went to Southampton and I believe they had a strict policy in their being at least one past/sample paper present
Hope this helps + sorry for the delay in getting back to you @BooksAndTea789

Hi, firstly, no need to apologise at all! I appreciate all of this help and clarification. Secondly, thank you! I was really lost, I kept watching youtube videos about what uni is like and what teaching and learning are like but I still felt confused but your post has helped.

I did not realise that you would be given handouts before lectures and I was also under the assumption that each professor makes the papers for the exam so I just thought exams each year would be different.

Thanks again!