Showing posts with label expensive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label expensive. Show all posts
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Say Hello to My Little Friends: My Med Books
I finally bought my med books! I didn't buy all ten of them because...ahem...they were..ahem...too expensive. :))
Clinical Anatomy by Regions and Moore's Clinically Oriented Anatomy, and Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy are must haves, as advised by the higher years, for Anatomy and Physio subjects.
They say Netter is a big big help when it comes to dissecting time. For Biochemistry, you can either choose from Thomas Devlin's Textbook of Biochemistry with Clinical Correlations, or Harper's Illustrated Biochemistry. Feedback from these 2 biochemistry books is that Harper's is more direct and doesnt explain most of the basic biochem stuff/concepts. Non-science majors might find it a bit more difficult to understand. Devlin, on the other hand, explains everything, and is very helpful for those who dont have a background in the hard sciences, or have never taken up biochem in college.
Of the two books, I still opted for Harper's even though I come from a non- pre-med course. Reasons are: 1) majority of the other students use Harper, as well as the professors, I just want to be on the same page (both literally and figuratively) when classes start. I dont want to get confused if I use Devlin while others use Harper. 2) They say that the board exams base their biochem questions on Harpers. I dont know if there's any truth to this, but one school who has had a 100% passing rate in the board exams have sworn by this.
Aren't they soooooo purdy?!?!?! :))
They are heavy as hell, and if I had to bring those to school everyday, I would probably have severe scoliosis by the end of the year. loljk.
I was able to get some of the books here at half price from 2nd and 3rd year students who weren't able to use them that much during their first year. I kinda had second thoughts about buying it when I realized that they were selling it because they were unused. Then again, one of the students explained that there were so many things that they needed to study at one time that they barely had enough time to read these books, and they just relied on a collection of tranx or transcriptions.
Tranx is a reviewer which is a combination of the teacher's actual lecture, and the book. So one student records the teachers whole lecture, transcribes it, matches additional information from the book, and voila! you have your tranx.
Why not just refrain from buying all the books and focus on the tranx? Well, for one thing, I dont want to get dependent on other people's work. Sure, I can make my own tranx for every single subject, but I doubt I'd have the willpower to actually do it, as well as the time involved.
These books will be my best friends for the next few years, I just hope that they'll love me back. :))
Clinical Anatomy by Regions and Moore's Clinically Oriented Anatomy, and Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy are must haves, as advised by the higher years, for Anatomy and Physio subjects.
They say Netter is a big big help when it comes to dissecting time. For Biochemistry, you can either choose from Thomas Devlin's Textbook of Biochemistry with Clinical Correlations, or Harper's Illustrated Biochemistry. Feedback from these 2 biochemistry books is that Harper's is more direct and doesnt explain most of the basic biochem stuff/concepts. Non-science majors might find it a bit more difficult to understand. Devlin, on the other hand, explains everything, and is very helpful for those who dont have a background in the hard sciences, or have never taken up biochem in college.
Of the two books, I still opted for Harper's even though I come from a non- pre-med course. Reasons are: 1) majority of the other students use Harper, as well as the professors, I just want to be on the same page (both literally and figuratively) when classes start. I dont want to get confused if I use Devlin while others use Harper. 2) They say that the board exams base their biochem questions on Harpers. I dont know if there's any truth to this, but one school who has had a 100% passing rate in the board exams have sworn by this.
They are heavy as hell, and if I had to bring those to school everyday, I would probably have severe scoliosis by the end of the year. loljk.
I was able to get some of the books here at half price from 2nd and 3rd year students who weren't able to use them that much during their first year. I kinda had second thoughts about buying it when I realized that they were selling it because they were unused. Then again, one of the students explained that there were so many things that they needed to study at one time that they barely had enough time to read these books, and they just relied on a collection of tranx or transcriptions.
Tranx is a reviewer which is a combination of the teacher's actual lecture, and the book. So one student records the teachers whole lecture, transcribes it, matches additional information from the book, and voila! you have your tranx.
Why not just refrain from buying all the books and focus on the tranx? Well, for one thing, I dont want to get dependent on other people's work. Sure, I can make my own tranx for every single subject, but I doubt I'd have the willpower to actually do it, as well as the time involved.
These books will be my best friends for the next few years, I just hope that they'll love me back. :))
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Med Books...Y U SO EXPENSIVE?!
UPDATES: hahahaha, instead of buying them brand new, you can buy them from the upper years, a lot of my classmates are selling their old books. :)
you can also trysearching on sulit.com.ph for 2nd hand med books, i bought some of them online too, reliable rin yung mga sellers doon. :)
The book alikes are pretty expensive now that i think about it. And from my personal experience. Dont buy all the books just yet. Try to borrow books first and see which ones you like or are more fitting.
P.s. check my other post regarding which med books are usually used during your first year here. :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I enrolled last week, and going through several of the buildings, I found myself in the basement of the research center, where a spritely woman was selling our med books.
You can read more about them here.
you can also trysearching on sulit.com.ph for 2nd hand med books, i bought some of them online too, reliable rin yung mga sellers doon. :)
The book alikes are pretty expensive now that i think about it. And from my personal experience. Dont buy all the books just yet. Try to borrow books first and see which ones you like or are more fitting.
P.s. check my other post regarding which med books are usually used during your first year here. :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I enrolled last week, and going through several of the buildings, I found myself in the basement of the research center, where a spritely woman was selling our med books.
She handed me a piece of paper with all the books listed on it, with corresponding prices and discounted prices.
Hmmmm. Short list. Not bad.
Miss..how much all in all?
Wait a moment, I'll just compute it all. Dont worry dear, its all the books for the whole year.
Uh oh. The woman, even though she hadn;t computed it all yet, was already trying to justify the price...
Php 23, 600.00 lang po.
Poker face.
Ah, ok po, thank you. I'll come back during start of classes to buy the books.
Not. I was shocked with the prices. Well, in all fairness, there were like, 10 books, so around 2k each. But I've never bought that many books that totaled that amount, ever.
So I decided to poke around the internet, look for ebooks, or at least, 2nd hand books that could soften the destructive force that these books would create on my parents wallet. 90% of the books could be downloaded within the day. The other 10%, niet.
Common sites like 4shared.com, Demonoid.me, and Torrentz.eu were pretty good at finding these little suckers. You can also try typing "download free med books" and a hundred or so sites would just pop up, and provide you with links to several useful med books.
With torrent sites, you can just type med books, and several torrents are there for downloading. single books are at 20-100mb in size only, while others, the really good ones, are bundled up with about a hundred or so other medical books that are really useful like USMLE lectures, notes, colored atlases, pdfs, and other tidbits.
I found one seller on sulit.com.ph that sold black and white, photocopied versions of the book. at nearly half the price or so. Although its not advisable for some books like colored atlases for anatomy, physio, and neuro, its still a pretty good deal for other books that you just need to read.
In sulit, they describe it as:
What's a BOOK ALIKE?
♥ Photocopied medical books, hard-bound, covered like the original one BUT are a lot cheaper.
1ST YEAR BOOKS
| ||
VOLUMES
|
PRICE
| |
| Devlin's Textbook of Biochemistry (7th ed) |
1
|
P1520
|
| Harper's Illustrated Biochemistry (28th ed) |
1
|
P1210
|
| Berne & Levy's Physiology (6th ed) |
1
|
P1250
|
| Langman's Madical Embryology (11th ed) |
1
|
P930
|
| Snell's Clinical Neuroanatomy (7th ed) |
1
|
P1050
|
| Moore's Clinical Oriented Anatomy (6th ed) |
1
|
P1460
|
2ND YEAR BOOKS
| ||
VOLUMES
|
PRICE
| |
| Robbins and Cotran Pathologic Basis of Diseases (8th ed) |
2
|
P2350
|
| Basic and Clinical Pharmacology - Katzung (11th ed) |
1
|
P1500
|
| Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine (18th ed) |
3
|
P4460
|
| Bates' Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking (10th ed) |
1
|
P1350
|
| Kaplan and Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry (10th ed) |
1
|
P1680
|
| Jawetz Medical Microbiology (25th ed) |
1
|
P1250
|
| Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics (18th ed) |
2
|
P3540
|
| Schwartz's Principles of Surgery (9th ed) |
2
|
P2620
|
| Goodman and Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics (12th ed) |
2
|
P2770
|
POCKET GUIDES/ COMPANIONS/ “BABY” BOOKS
| ||
PRICE
| ||
| Pocket Companion to Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology (11th ed) |
P700
| |
| BRS Physiology |
P450
| |
| Schwartz Manual of Surgery |
P1300
| |
| Robbins and Cotran's Pathology Pocket Guide( 7th ed, with markings from original book) |
P700
| |
| Harrison's Manual of Internal Medicine 17th ed (2vols) |
P700
| |
| Sabiston Textbook of Surgery Pocket Companion |
P1000
| |
| Kaplan and Sadock's Pocket Handbook of Clinical Psychiatry (5th ed) |
P950
| |
Compare the book alike prices with this:
Not bad for some, right? I was thinking of different options rather than just buying them all from school since they were all sooooo expensive.
And so I decided to buy the important ones (as upper classmen advised, the books that are important, are the ones you will need when you review for the boards). so out of the 12 books there, I just plan on buying 6 or 7 of them, and, since I have the ebook versions of the others, I just plan on buying a lot of paper, some black and colored ink, and voila! print my own textbook.
Why not do it for all the books? Well, it would be a b*tch to just print 1,000 pages. And especially if they;re colored with super detailed drawings of the human body, I cant afford to have fuzzy images mess up with my studying.
So I plan to print 4 or 5 of the books, chapter by chapter, going with the flow of teaching at school, instead of printing them all in one day. From Php23,600, I whittled it down to Php 14,000. I already have the super fast printer, all I need is the ink, and ink just costs about 350-400 bucks a cartridge. Thank youuuuu HP for being so sturdy and cheap.
How about you guys?
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