It is critical that college students buy their text books immediately. To delay is to put your academic success at risk. Text books are an essential part of each college course. College and university faculty rely heavily on course text books to teach their courses. Quizzes, tests, papers, presentations - are always heavily dependent on material from the course text books.
I've mentioned in an earlier blog post that this particular year is experiencing an HUGE increase in college and university enrollments nationwide. This means that more college students are trying to register for the same number of courses, meaning that more students will be placed on waiting lists for college courses. One fall-out of this situation is that college course text books are going to sell-out at the college bookstore very quickly. Some students on course waiting lists purchase text books, hoping that they will get in the class. If they don't, they'll sell the text books back to the bookstore at the text book buy-back period, knowing that they will lose money. But their motivation was to get into the class and be successful if at all possible.
Other students make the mistake of waiting to buy their text books until just before classes start, or even wait until after the first week of class to see "if they will really need the text books)". Bad strategy. You WILL need the text books.
Some college instructors have multiple textbooks for a class and most often they indicate which are "required" and which are "optional". College students should at least purchase the "required" text books. You can take the chance of not purchasing the "optional" text books and hope that the instructor doesn't decide to spend a lot of time on the optional texts during the term.
A strategy that some students try, which usually results in dismal failure, is to NOT purchase the required textbooks, relying instead on reading the "reserved" copy of the textbook in the college's library, OR, borrowing the text from a friend who is also taking the class. The problem with this strategy is that the "reserved" textbook is not always available when you need it, and the same goes for borrowing text books from friends. But the biggest mistake is not understanding that your college course textbooks are not only for reading the material, but should be used as a review and study guide and resource tool. Your first involvement with the material in the text is reading the chapter. But after that you need to use the text for taking notes, reviewing for quizzes and chapters, and to "study and learn" the material. Reading the text is only one part of how a college level textbook is used in the learning process.
To not buy your textbooks is like a professional car mechanic/technician not having his/her own tools. You will not be successful professional mechanic and you won't be able to keep your job. In college, not having your textbook "tools" in order to save some money is a foolish strategy, because you'll suffer academically. If you fail in with your academic efforts, you'll lose your financial aid, get suspended, etc.
Bottom line, buy your college course textbooks, as soon as possible. More than any other tool you will use in college, they will impact your academic success.