<p>Hello, I'm a 16-year-old-junior in high school, and I have to begin to look for colleges. I'm nervous! I think I want to go to a liberal arts school, because they seem to offer a wide variety of courses. I'm very into art, so I'd preferably like to go to a school where art is heavily emphasized, but I don't live/breathe/think art all the time, so I'm interested in other things. I'd like to do something with psychology or writing, too. I want a lot of freedom to change my mind, change my major just in case, etc. How do I figure out what the best place for me is? What's a good liberal art school that offers quite a bit, but still has a lot of visually artistic opportunities? How much are they, usually, and should I apply to strictly art schools anyway?
Thanks!</p>
<p>Liberal Arts Colleges are generally smaller schools that have smaller student populations, smaller classes, and more interaction with the professors. Because they’re smaller, the range of courses is generally going to be smaller, not larger. LACs are wonderful for the people who need that kind of academic atmosphere, but they can never offer the same number of classes as a 50,000 person university.</p>
<p>A lot (most?) LACs are private, so they are quite expensive, in the range of $50,000 a year. Don’t let that scare you off though. Depending on how much you can afford (your family contribution) and your grades and SATs scores, there’s the possibility of very good scholarships.</p>
<p>Rainbow, Now is a good time for you to begin thinking about whether you want to go to an art school or a full service college/university. You can continue to pursue both routes for the next year, visit schools, talk to students and professors. You don’t need to make that decision yet.</p>
<p>Liberal arts is a general category that includes studio art, other arts like theater, music, social studies, language, science, math – just about everything except professional degree programs such as law, architecture, nursing, engineering.</p>
<p>The terminology can be confusing because there are small liberal arts colleges (LACs) that offer only undergraduate programs (or limited professional or graduate programs) AND there are also liberal arts programs at all medium and large universities.</p>
<p>So if you put art school to the side for a moment, you will still have a wide choice of liberal arts programs – from large State Universities, to medium privates and small LACs. All of these would offer studio art, though some departments are better than others.</p>
<p>The cost of any of the above varies widely, but I’d say the biggest distinction is between publics and privates. Once you get into the private category, the size or focus doesn’t much matter; they are all in the range of $40 to 50,000 per year.</p>
<p>If you need financial aid to attend college, then you should first determine whether you qualify for NEED based aid. You do this by asking your parents to use an on line calculator to see how much your family would be expected to pay. Need based aid varies from school to school, but at least that would give you an idea if it is workable. The same range would apply to all categories of colleges: public/private, small/medium/large, liberal arts/art school. Most give some degree of need based aid.</p>
<p>The other type of aid is merit aid. This is only given by specific colleges/universities – again, the size or type is not the determining factor. If you can’t need more than the financial aid calculator tells you to expect then you should start looking into merit aid.</p>
<p>Well, that’s a lot to think about, but in the next year you’ll learn a lot.</p>
<p>In order to give you specific recommendations of liberal arts schools that have good art departments I’d need to know your grades, your financial situation and your preferred geographic area.</p>