<p>aligaz, I think disregarding the financial advice that people have been trying to give you is a BIG mistake. We’ll figure it out later is a recipe for disaster.</p>
<p>If your parents are able and willing to pay for a private education (more than $200K) then you don’t have to be concerned with merit aid. </p>
<p>If, on the other hand, you will need some help from the college (as opposed to “it would be nice”) then you’re going to have a completely different list. Most of the selective colleges in the Northeast do not offer merit aid, period, no matter how high your scores and GPA are.</p>
<p>Be sure to submit a portfolio of your artwork as a supplement to your application, even if you don’t intend to major in studio art. At many selective schools this is a plus.</p>
<p>It sounds like to me that you have to do a little research before you can narrow things down at all. If location is an issue then that should be the first on your list to add some colleges to your list. Make a list of the cities that you would like to be close to, Boston for example, and then go to the next criteria of requirement.</p>
<p>You have a specific size of school that you are interested in and that will make narrowing down the choices easier as well. Go through your list of cities and find out what colleges are within a half hour or hour radius. Then check the size and number of students. This is all basic stuff that you won’t have to dig too deeply for.</p>
<p>Once you have that down, plus our other factored requirements that you mentioned, you will be able to see what your options are. While you are doing all this searching around you will be also learning bits and pieces about different schools. It will help when you are narrowing down your choices and you might find one school that pops out at you more than others. just from doing this basic research. It will also help to consider the advice from other posters about specific schools. The fact is that the more general research that you do, the better prepared you will be to make a decision.</p>