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LSN is such a tremendous resource but I've always wanted to know if their COL figures for each respective school is accurate? I know COL is all based on an individual in the sense that one person may live an exuberant lifestyle while in school compared with another student who lives a frugal but for the most part, on average, have you found LSN accurate in regards to their COL numbers? I'm asking because I'm interested in SMU and so when I checked LSN, they report it'd cost $25k to live off campus however when I ran through a rough estimate I got a number much less than $25k (rent + groceries + monthly social stipend). For all those who are currently law students or have been, have you noticed that you often come under what LSN reports for your school, is it roughly the same or has your COL been over the number?

Also, for those who live off-campus and not at home for 1L, did you find yourself leasing for 9 months or 12?

Anyone ?

Pretty sure LSN just takes the total estimated COA from the school, but I feel like that's an easy thing to figure out just by comparing numbers. Sure, you might come under their estimate, but how would LSN know to account for your degree of frugality?

Oh look...SMU estimates about $25k/year for living off campus... http://law.smu.edu/admissions/costs-and ... attendance

I understand how LSN calculates their numbers; I was primarily looking for anecdotal experiences from users on here on what their experience was like in regards to if they went over their budget or not. Anecdotal experiences would give a better context behind the numbers that LSN posts despite the fact that like you said, people live different levels of frugal lifestyles. For example, BigZuck on one of these threads posted that he had a budget of COL for $XX prior to attending LS but once he graduated, that number for COL greatly exceeded his budget. Just wanted to know how common this was