[Kate*]

As far as estimating the cost of attendance the school always over shoots that. Your books and classes will be more expensive than undergrad (That's what Amazon is for), but you can disregard most of the other stuff. Even if you live on campus, you may not need or be eligible for the meal plan. My school had the undergrad and graduate costs listed separately and then some of the graduate stuff was different depending on the program, so make sure you're looking at the right things. Grad stuff is usually listed per credit hour so you won't get the undergrad discount of "between X and Y amount of credits is one price"

Also, see how set in stone your plan of study is. The first few semesters you'll need to prereqs, but ours was more of a list and as long as we met the requirements, we could take most of them in any order we wanted except the ones that the end that had to be done in order. A lot of the plans of study they give you are examples that you don't have to follow to the letter, but every school is different.