Chegg – Textbook Rentals and More

College is expensive, there’s no denying that. Tuition fees and living costs may be going up, but a web-application called Chegg is doing its part to ensure the cost of buying textbooks is going down. Students can use the online app to rent textbooks, buy textbooks, sell textbooks, read textbooks online, and even score insider information about the upcoming courses they’re planning to take.

Sign up for Chegg by logging in through Facebook and entering the name of the university you attend. The application is broken up into a few basic sections: Textbooks, Courses, Homework Help, eTextbooks, and Deals. To score great deals on textbooks, enter theISBN, author’s name, or title of the textbook you’re looking to buy. What you’ll see next is a page with all your purchasing and rental options. In most cases, you can rent a book for cheaper than you could buy it, and you can purchase the e-version of the textbook for cheaper than you could rent it. In any case, textbooks on Chegg are generally a whole lot less expensive than they are at your campus store.

Chegg’s textbook rental service is only part of what the application has to offer. It also provides users with course reviews, course requirements, academic scheduling information, and grade distribution data that comes directly from the Office of the Registrar at each university Chegg supports. Students who need help with assignments in the courses they’re currently taking can click on the Homework Help tab to search through previously-asked questions – organized by textbook, topic, or subject – or submit their own queries and wait for other students to respond.

Practical Uses:

• Save money by renting your textbooks
• Download e-textbooks to read on your tablet
• Get answers to your questions about a course you’re currently taking
• Find out the average grades of students taking a class you’re enrolling in next semester

Insider Tips:

• Chegg’s eTextbook reader instantly streams books to PCs, Macs, and iPads
• Shoppers get 7-day access to the eTextbook reader while their physical books are being shipped
• Students can sell their used books back to Chegg
• Chegg gets its grade distribution data from the Office of the Registrar

What we liked:

• Most people can save money by renting their books rather than buying
• Chegg offers course reviews and scheduling tools
• Chegg shoppers can read textbooks in digital format while they wait for their hardback copies to arrive in the mail
• Textbooks are easy to look up by ISBN, topic, or author name

What we didn’t like:

• Nothing

Alternatives:

• BookRenter.com – http://www.bookrenter.com
• Uloop – http://www.uloop.com

Company Info:

• Launched: 2007
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Santa Clara, California
• Founded by: Osman Rashid and Aayush Phumbhra
• Web site: http://www.chegg.com

Costs:

• Free to use