Top private schools that meet full need, in high-demand locations (in or near major cities in the Northeast), are going to be tough for an unhooked applicant with a 3.4UW and sub-4.0W If you were a recruited athlete, that GPA might be sufficient, but in the pool of unhooked applicants… you’re probably going to need to go much farther from home to find a school that will admit you with a generous aid package. I’m thinking, for example, of a school like Lawrence University in Wisconsin, which has great music opportunities for non-major musicians and has a particularly well-respected physics department with strong placement in PhD programs. They don’t guarantee full-need-met aid, but they’re fairly generous and often need-based+merit combined will make it affordable. St. Olaf in Minnesota is another that’s very strong in both music and math/science, and they do meet full need or very close to it. Both of these schools have strong study abroad programs and have sufficient depth of course offerings in Chinese to offer a Chinese major.
My first thought in terms of MA colleges was Smith, which is a reach but worth a try. If you run the Net Price Calculators for both UMass Amherst and Smith, which is more affordable? A lot of students in the 5 College Consortium need transportation to the Boston area; as LeastComplicated says, investigate the options, because limiting yourself to schools on transit lines in the Boston metro area may not give you great options. (Although, UMass Lowell’s reputation is rising fast, and they even have an observatory on campus.)
Wellesley would be a big reach, but it would be both financially and geographically excellent, not to mention allowing cross-registration at MIT as well as consortium cross-registration with Brandeis, Babson, & Olin. It’s a tough admit, but not as tough as Tufts (higher acceptance rate and slightly lower median stats) - not because its reputation is any less, but just because the potential applicant pool is smaller, as with all women’s colleges. I’d give women’s colleges very serious consideration as ED1/ED2 contenders; try to visit Wellesley, Smith, and Mt. Holyoke before making a decision about an ED school. (Bryn Mawr is another good suggestion, albeit a bit farther to visit.)
Tufts makes extremely clear that there is no real ED “bump” there; higher acceptance rates in ED result only from higher numbers of hooked applicants (especially athletic recruits) in the ED cycle and a stronger ED applicant pool; they state very clearly that applying ED there does not improve the odds for an unhooked applicant.
Are you in the top 10% of your HS class? Top 20 or 25% This is another metric that can be very helpful in gauging chances.