Update: As commenter Toby so astutely pointed out, the Forbes ranking lumps all colleges together, while U.S. News lists us under the “national university” category. If you look at our Forbes ranking as a “research universities,” we’re #19. No so bad…

Yesterday, Forbes magazine released its list of “America’s Top Colleges.”

Georgetown, which ranks #21 on the widely-cited U.S. News and World Report rankings, barely broke Forbes‘ top 50 with a ranking of 47.

At least they didn’t hate us as much as some of the Ivies: Columbia tumbled from #4 in U.S. News to #42 in Forbes; Pennsylvania, from #5 to #52. Top-ranked for the second year in a row is Williams College, a rural, western Massachusetts liberal arts school.

In general, schools that made it to the upper ranks are less expensive, as in tuition-free West Point (#3), or give very generous financial aid, such as #2 Princeton.

Writer Michael Noer asserts that the magazine’s rankings “evaluate the college purchase as a consumer would:  Is it worth spending as much as a quarter of a million dollars for this degree?”

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Textbooks will do serious violence to your budget if you don’t plan ahead. Follow these easy tips and you’ll save yourself from the most easily-preventable first-year expense.

Don’t buy from the bookstore… ever

The only thing the University bookstore offers is the dual indignity of high prices and long lines during fall move-in. The only thing you should  ever use this seething den of price-gouging horror for is to look up what textbooks you need.

By law, the University must now post textbooks before classes begin in the fall. These lists can be found on the bookstore website. Copy the ISBN nine-digit code onto a document and use it to search other bookstores.You can also find a link to each class’s textbook list on its MyAccess Schedule of Courses page.

If no books are posted, check to see if there’s a class syllabus on Blackboard. Sometimes professors don’t even use textbooks, preferring instead to post articles in PDF form on Blackboard. If that fails, look up the professor’s name in the directory and send them a polite e-mail asking for the book list. They will understand your pain (they were students once).

Use Amazon or AbeBooks to buy textbooks

Using these two sources, you will save 50-75 percent on bookstore prices. I find AbeBooks has a slightly better selection of editions and ages, while Amazon offers a year of free shipping for students using their .edu e-mail address. In any case, both have book buyback that far exceeds the pauper rates the bookstore gives.

Buy old editions and international prints if you can

Publishers slightly modify books almost every year, often by just jumbling around the chapters or adding a half-paragraph of new information (see: planned obsolescence, evils of capitalism). This tactic allows them to coerce students to buy new books instead of cheaper used texts.

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The Project on Student Debt recently published its figures for the Class of 2009—and it ain’t pretty.

American student debt is frighteningly high; according to the study, which was published by the Institute for College Access and Success, the national average debt for a graduating senior in 2009 was $24,000. Among all states, D.C. claims the highest debt rate per student ($30,033), although New Hampshire ($29,443), Maine ($29,143), Iowa ($28,883), and Vermont ($27,786) followed close behind.

Surprisingly enough, however, Georgetown doesn’t have the highest student debt among all schools in the nation’s capital. Corcoran College of Art and Design ($42,355) leads the pack, followed by American University ($40,966) and George Washington University ($31,299). The figures make Georgetown’s $25,085 average debt look paltry by comparison.

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The good news: Georgetown dropped in Campus Grotto‘s annual ranking of the nation’s most expensive colleges. The bad news: Georgetown is still in the top 15.

According to the rankings, Georgetown is the 15th-most expensive college in America. The annual tuition cost, $39,768, was ranked the 52nd-most expensive.

Campus Grotto complied the rankings through the sum of each college’s tuition, room, and board costs. Optional student fees, such as University-provided insurance, are not included in the cost.

“We take the price a typical freshman would pay for tuition, room and board,” the college news website wrote.

With an annual cost of $53,340, Georgetown is the ninth most expensive school in the country, according to Forbes.

The rankings, which were compiled using data provided by the Chronicle of Higher Education and Campus Grotto, almost exclusively features small, private colleges in the Northeast.

Although Forbes did not account for financial aid, the rankings reflect the costs of tuition, fees, room, board for college students during the 2010-2011 academic year.

Sarah Lawrence College topped the list with its $57, 730 annual cost. Last year, Georgetown was ranked seventh most expensive by Campus Grotto and second most expensive by CNN.

Adding insult to injury, our perennially-expensive neighbors in Foggy Bottom dropped out of the top 10 in the Forbes rankings.

The difference between Georgetown and George Washington? $65.

Textbooks are perhaps the biggest first-year expense that students can control. Yet at the beginning of every year, a Disneyland-sized queue of freshmen—and upperclassmen—inevitably winds around the upper floor of the bookstore.

After handing over shrink-wrapped copies of Accounting and Econ textbooks, students can find themselves paying well over $1000 dollars for books. When the semester ends, they’ll be lucky to sell those books for a fraction of what they paid.

That’s nonsense.

To help you cut down on books’ costs, we’ve got a list of suggestions after the jump. (Feel free to add your own in the comments!)

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