Answers

My daughter spent about $200 dollars per quarter on her books.

I remember taking my son to the bookstore and being completely baffled by the cost of some books. Some individual textbooks cost over $150.

The cost will be higher, probably, for students at semester schools because they'll only be buying books two times a year for longer classes. Students at quarter-system schools buy books 3 times a year for shorter classes.

The first factor, as mentioned by savvy1 above, is whether your student is on the quarter system or the semester system. Most schools are on the semester system, which means there are 2 terms per year. The student will buy books twice a year, for classes longer in duration. This means more reading is crammed in to each class. So the semester student will spend more at once, but only twice a year, whereas the quarter student will spend less each time, but three times a year rather than two. The second factor is the student's major, or what kind of classes he/she is taking. The kind of class the student is in determines a lot about the cost of books. Textbooks cost a lot more than novels or other paperback books used for reading courses and seminars. For this reason, science and math majors tend to be more expensive as far as books go. Some textbooks are easily in the $150-$200 dollar range, and that's just for 1 quarter or semester.

Textbooks can often by found used on the internet or at the campus bookstore (or even through local classifieds sites such as www.craigslist.com), which can greatly reduce the cost of books. If you're a science major, this is something that can be a life saver. When I was in school, I saved at least a thousand dollars over the course of my undergraduate career by buying used textbooks rather than new ones.