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Like I said... the $8622 + $1692 (miscellaneous & personal) is what's projected to cover ALL of your non-school/non-health insurance expenses.
But yeah... $8622 for 9 months leaves $958/month. If you search craigslist for a room/share in fort collins you'll see that most listings are between $300-400/month plus utilities. It's very doable to find housing for $500 or less including utilities. That leaves over $450 for other things. That's more than enough to cover food, groceries, and a lot of car costs. If you have a roommate, even luxury 2 br/2 bath apartments can easily be found for $450-600/person + utilities.
During my firstyear, I paid a flat rate of $475/month in rent including ALL utilities. At the same time I earned $400-600 a month with my part-time jobs. So I ended up not using up my loans from first-semester, and had enough left over that I didn't even take out any for second-semester to cover living costs. I eat out a lot too, and am not thrifty when it comes to groceries. I also didn't use up all of books/supplies budget on school supplies so I had an extra thousand dollars or so to work with.
(Disclaimer: I used my savings to move in and get settled. I also used my savings + bf charities to pay for all of my airfare to go back and forth from Boston and for my trip home to Japan. So my loans + job money only paid for my day-to-day living costs while at school).
Thanks for being so responsive. I am getting the picture that these COA projections should not be taken literally as absolutes and instead with a grain of salt as loose indicators of what to expect. I am sure everyone's experience varies, except for the cost of things like tuition and books. Some people might opt to live in a house share with 3 others students. Others might demand their own penthouse apartment with a view of the repro barn. Cost of living will vary from city to city and prospective students would be wise to understand this when deciding where they would like to attend. This completes my obsessing over financial costs phase of the selection process. Next I will tackle the weather and best looking classmates component...
Thanks again.