<p>Next year I will be a junior in high school, which means I will be thrown into a year jam-packed with college related everything, so I really want to get a head start this summer.
I definately want to go to school for art, I'm just not sure what field yet... I've been musing with set design, art therapy, and good old art teacher but nothing seems to really click with me yet, and seeing as how just being a painter isn't going to pay the bills in this world, I need to figure out a carreer.
I was just wondering how you get started narrowing down colleges, and figuring out what you're even looking for, because right now I feel like I'm just searching blindly in the dark.</p>
<p>First you should try to get a sense of what your goals in life are. Now, you don’t have to have a set list, and not even adults know what their ultimate goals in life are, but you should at least think about them. Then think about what size schools, location, setting you want that will also help you achieve those goals. What type of student body would you like to be around? Are you more comfortable with a politically active campus or not? Do you care? </p>
<p>Since you want to go do a lot of stuff for art, I recommend that you consider a big university with art programs, rather than small colleges that might not have too many opportunities for art. My friend, who wants to do art in college and is really good at it, got into University of Washington, Eckerd College in Florida, and Rhode Island School of Design. Her first choice was RISD, but they didn’t give her enough financial aid. She visited Eckerd, but she didn’t think the art program was very good there, so now she’ll be headed to the UW to study art and anything else she wants to study.</p>
<p>Register at the collegeboard site to start identifying colleges with your major and other characteristics (geographic, size, cost, and the like) important to you. There are sites other than collegeboard that allow you to do this–search cc for them–but it was best for my D. There are also guides you can purchase or, better, find at the library.</p>
<p>If there are professional organizations in the field(s) you might want to pursue, they sometimes have information about degree programs across colleges.</p>
<p>If you know of anyone in a field you’re interested in, you could ask if there are schools that have good programs.</p>