<p>There are a few courses I’m already sure that I am going to take. For example, I know I will take intro microeconomics first semester. How could I find the books I will need ahead of time? I’m thinking it would be easier, plus since there is no summer reading I’ll have something useful if I get kinda mentally restless. Thanks</p>
<p>While you may be targeting some classes already, the individual instructors may not have been assigned at this early date. Even so, in most classes, they reserve the right to choose whatever texts they want up until the syllabus is distributed.</p>
<p>Maybe with some investigation, you might be able to discover if, for instance, Professor X is teaching Chem 115 again. If so, you might want to contact him/her and see if plans are in place to use the same textbook, same edition for Fall of 09. Otherwise, you’re out of luck.</p>
<p>Jeepers! How in heck did you get into Yale if you can’t think of any better way to spend your time this summer than getting a head start on your micro textbook? (I’m only barely kidding here. If I were Dean of Admissions, I would be sending you a letter asking you to explain why we shouldn’t rescind your admission. Your application portrayed you as a self-starting leader who is always challenging himself. Who wrote it?)</p>
<p>JHS–you are an idiot. My request here took very little time, and there is no reason for you to assume that this was anywhere near the best way I am spending my summer. It is a very small thing.</p>
<p>guynameded - if you knew how to read and interpret what you read, you would realize that JHS was KIDDING. No need for you to get so fired up.</p>
<p>For two sections in 2008, the textbook was:</p>
<p>Robert H. Frank, Microeconomics and Behavior, 7th ed. McGraw Hill, New York, 2008. It’s OK to use an older edition.</p>
<p>Let’s be more friendly toward each other in this cyber-world, OK?</p>
<p>2013yale815-maybe you should learn to read. He specifically said he was only barely kidding. otherwise i would have assumed he was. If you’re gonna get involved in others’ arguments, you should probably comprehend the basics of it.</p>
<p>mcat2-do you happen to know whether that was the book used in 07 and/or years before that? I’m just trying to figure out whether that is very likely to be the book this year</p>
<p>If you have received your NetID, you can access this info by yourself at:
[Yale</a> Online Course Information | Search Courses](<a href=“Yale Course Search | University Registrar's Office”>Yale Course Search | University Registrar's Office)</p>
<p>Click syllabi on the left panel.</p>
<p>Hmmm…I just click one course called 115a for Fall 2007. Its textboook is different from that for Fall 2008: Microeconomics, Bernheim and Whinston.</p>
<p>Another course is called 116a. Its textbook is different:</p>
<p>N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Macroeconomics, 4th edition.</p>
<p>I really do not know much about courses offered by the Economics department (as indicated by my CC ID: mcat ;-)). So I may not be a good source for this kind of information. Note: Not all professors provide syllabi there though.</p>
<p>Maybe you should learn not to take what you read so literally, guynameded. He said “If I were Dean of Admissions, I would be sending you a letter asking you to explain why we shouldn’t rescind your admission. Your application portrayed you as a self-starting leader who is always challenging himself. Who wrote it?”</p>
<p>He said your application portrayed yourself as a self starting leader who is always challenging himself, and that this is out of character. By trying to get the textbook for a class you have not even been enrolled in yet, you are clearly showing that you are a “self starting leader”. Thus, it was a JOKE.</p>
<p>Sorry, 2013yale. Trying to get an early start on your into micro textbook because you have nothing going on intellectually over the summer without any assigned summer reading is not being a self-starting leader, it is being an obsessive, unimaginative weenie. (I don’t really believe guy/ed is necessarily an obsessive, unimaginative weenie, but that’s sure how his question portrayed him.) That just sounds like a, I don’t know, Cornell kind of thing to do.</p>
<p>If you can’t think of anything better to read during the summer than a micro textbook, at least read one you WON’T be using in the fall, so that you get some benefit out of exposure to different approaches. Get an old one for $.50 – believe me, the differences in content will be minimal, Pareto boxes are 100 years old. Better yet, read some classics of political economy. Smith, Ricardo, Marx (the economics parts, not whatever you read in high school), Friedman, Coase. Or maybe read the Marshall Jevons mystery novels, which are tons of fun and chock-full of micro.</p>
<p>This is just a hearsay, so it is a myth at best and over-simplification for sure.</p>
<p>At one time, my child mentioned that there appears to be two groups of people who maintain their ego in a different way.</p>
<p>One group of people tend to cluster in premed classes. Their egos are mostly based on the grades they get in their science classes. You know you are around these people when you are in a class where some student will ask “Is this going to be in the test?” (they will try to phrase this question in a somewhat subtle way of course.) They will be very depressed when they do not get the grade they perceive as good enough.</p>
<p>The other group of people tend to be on the I-banking/prelaw track. Their ego are mostly based on whether they can dominate others whenever an argument comes up. The premed group will likely be “eaten up alive” by most members from this group. On the other hand, these people will be “owned” by the science professors if they talk in such a way in their science classes (“Shut up!, are you trying to waste everybody’s time here?”); those professors will not tolerate this kind of attitude.</p>
<p>These two groups of people join different types of clubs. When they are graduated and join the workforce, the latter group will eventually become bosses as they enjoy and are good at dominating other people, while the former group will likely be dominated by their bosses who are from the other group.</p>
<p>I repeat: This is a myth so it is not necessary true. I bring it up just for the fun of it. Please do not be too serious about what I just wrote.</p>
<p>JHS: Well said. Although my child is more on the science-y side, this summer he picks up some humanity textbook and reads what he did not finish reading for his class last semester (because he dropped that course in the middle of last semester), and he does not plan to take that class again. He reads it just because he thinks it is good for him intellectually – and he is preparing for his mcat test this summer.</p>
<p>i suggest you enjoy your summer before college and don’t worry about reading textbooks. they change from year to year and different econ classes have different books and you don’t know what class you’re going to be in yet. if i were you and i wanted to get some kind of intellectual head start, i would read about econ or whatever but not textbooks, people don’t even read them when they buy them. and if you do decide to read textbooks over the summer, don’t tell anyone. if people find out you read textbooks over the summer, tsk tsk…not a good impression.</p>
<p>JHS, way ahead of u. The first thing I read this summer was Smith (Wealth of Nations). I enjoyed it but decided to continue with something more…idk practical? So I wanted the textbook, even just to skim through it. I just bought a used one for 6 bucks so even if i never open it its no biggie. Thanks for the responses guys</p>
<p>One thing you’ll learn at Yale is that it’s impossible to do every word of the reading, unless you want to spend your life in the weenie bins. Also, the econ textbooks suck. Trying to expand your mind over the summer is a great thing to do, but I agree with JHS – go read something you won’t be reading in the fall. Reading your econ textbook ahead of time just makes you slightly obsessive, since you’d be learning all that in a few months anyway – I promise you, reading the textbook over the summer won’t give you any advantage at all. The intro econ professors barely teach from the textbooks anyway. On the other hand, picking up some novel or philosophy text you wouldn’t otherwise read is a great way to learn and prepare yourself for college. </p>
<p>Also, please, for your own sake, take sgtpepper’s advice and DO NOT tell anyone that you read the econ textbook over the summer. I believe that you aren’t an obsessive over-ambitious weenie, but if you tell other students that you spent part of your summer reading your intro micro textbook, you might very well get labeled one. </p>
<p>And one more thing – I’m sure you won’t listen to this, but Intro Micro is an awful awful class. It ranges from “ok” with Tolga Koker to “abysmal” with several other profs – in other words, you can’t win. My advice is to shop it and see if you can stand it. Unless you’re absolutely bent on being an econ major (and keep in mind that you have to take 5 terrible classes as prereqs before you can get to the cool ones) I would strongly recommend against taking it. Of the 17 classes I’ve taken at Yale, Micro is the only one I disliked, and to be honest, I have yet to meet a single person who enjoyed it. There are SO many amazing classes you can take, so if I were to do it over again, I wouldn’t have wasted a credit on a class that was dull and pretty uninformative.</p>
<p>I agree with the others, reading the Microeconbook is not really advantageous. I don’t know what your HS is like, but the college textbooks are really supplementary. The Professors really do their own thing, and maybe just assign hw from the book. </p>
<p>But as to the general problem of texbook buying, I usually have two “cheap” approaches:
The first day of the class, the prof hands out the the book list:
- I buy the book using my student id (you’ll find out how) from the yale bookstore, and at the same time, order a cheaper (maybe older) version from amazon. By the time the book is shipped to you, you’ve been using the Yale Bkstore one, and can return it no question asked within about 2 weeks of the semester beginning.
- Buy the latest edition, new from Yale Bkstore/Amazon, and resell it at the beginning of the next semester or year. For popular classes/books you can usually recoup all your money. Have to time it right, and be willing to have your money sit around in this way. </p>
<p>Depends on whether you want to keep the books for life or whatever.</p>