Ethan Magoc photoWith thousands of dollars each year being saved by students who rent their textbooks rather than buy them, it is no wonder Chegg.com is rapidly gaining popularity.

Chegg is a website that lets students rent their textbooks for a chosen period of time, and easily return them with pre-paid shipping labels.

According to Chegg, students who rent their textbooks rather than buy them can save up to $500 per year.

Since the company was founded in 2007, they estimated to have saved students over $240 million.

Dan Rosenwig, Chegg’s President and chief executive says that it is their mission to provide students with a cost friendly option for purchasing books.

“These are difficult economic times and anything we can do to make it easier for students to get the books they need and for less, is a good thing,” Rosenwig said.

One major benefit to making any purchase online is that students do not have to deal with the hassle of a bookstore. Rarely will one find a book out of stock on this website.

Chegg also makes it very easy for students to receive packages quickly, as well as send them back easily.

Bill Driver, the assistant manager of the Preston Hall mailroom says that Chegg makes it easy for students to ship their books.

Driver said, “Chegg does make processing relatively easier as they often ship multiple books in one box, so we end up checking-in one package as opposed to two or more.

“Their boxes are bright orange with white lettering, which makes them very easy to see as they are coming down our receiving chute or if they are sitting in a stack of packages awaiting processing,” he said.

Finding the books on the website is also very simple. With more than 4.2 million titles, Chegg almost always has what a student needs. A search can be made by title, author or ISBN.

Many students choose to rent books they don’t feel attached to, or will no longer be needing when the course is over.

Sophomore Larae Tymochko has been renting her books since she started attending Mercyhurst.

“The books that I rent from Chegg are those that I don’t plan on keeping if they aren’t required for my major,” Tymochko said.

“It saves me money to rent them because the sell back prices of textbooks are next to nothing.”

In addition to being an affordable option for students to purchase texts, Chegg does what it can for the environment.

Every time a student rents with Chegg, they will plant a tree on the student’s behalf. The student even gets to choose where the planted tree will be located. This program is due to a partnership with the American Forests’ Global ReLeaf program.

With the cost of attending college reaching an all time high, who wouldn’t want an easy, efficient and cheap way to get textbooks? Chegg is a great, new option.