The Voice - Student Newspaper

College can wreak less havoc on your pocket

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed with the cost of class? For some students, classes will reach the thousands. Paying for school can become a penny pinching marathon. What can you do to make your dollar go a lot further?

Student loans, financial aid, and scholarships are great ways to save a few cents on college.

A great resource to hunting down low competitive scholarships is a book, available at the Glendale Community College (GCC) Media Center, titled, 1001 Ways to Pay for College; Practical Strategies to Make College Affordable written by Gen and Kelly Tanabe.

Also written by Tanabe is, Get Free Cash For College, which is another great scholarship resource.

Textbooks that satisfy expensive courses may end up costing you more than the course itself.

For textbooks that can be bought used, it would be ideal to bookmark required material on Amazon.com before the semester begins. On the first day of class, the instructors will give you an outline, featuring the final list of required material. Order the books you know you'll need and they'll be shipped by the time your third class meets.

If you are pressed for time, ask the students around you. If they have a copy of a required book they might be willing to sell it to you cheap, or loan it to you.

If worst comes to worst and you're willing to study at the library then ask your instructors to put books on reserve. Books on reserve are great ways to save close to $700 in textbook expenses. Plus, doing your work in the library where there are few distractions makes it easier to study.

Mathematics courses require the use of a graphing calculator, which is a $150 purchase. You might consider renting a calculator from GCC. It only costs $18 to rent a graphing calculator for one semester. You can pay for the rental at the Enrollment Center cashier. Just bring your identification and receipt to the Math Solutions building and you will be set for the semester.

Materials for school are also on the list of things to budget for. The 99 cent store and the Dollar Tree have pens, paper, glue, memo pads, and tape recorders. Sears and Big Lots are also prime spots for picking up class materials.

Flash drives can be a college student's lifesaver because they electronically help transport work from school to home. The cheapest Flash drives can be found at Fry's Electronics Store. You can also purchase flash drives from Ebay.com or Craigslist.com.

Attending college and taking on a full course load of work is already stressful enough, paying for an education shouldn't be.