Picking a language school

Now that I've got some things down and April is over, May is my month to study intensely -- CFA and espanol.

I need to find a language school, so that I can hopefully start classes next Monday. Believe it or not, I'm going to aim for early classes. At first, I thought that would mean 11am. But now I'm considering 8am classes, so that I have to be disciplined about waking up, doing spanish, and then bouncing back to my apartamento for a nap before some afternoon CFA studying.

I thought finding a language school would be easy, as there are many options. And it's a service, which means in this place it will be cheap in terms of USD. But there's lots of things to consider -- cost, group classes vs. private, do they take AmEx?, time offered, location -- close to me is preferred, possibility of meeting people, but at least close to a Subte (subway) stop would be nice, commitment factor (eg, do i have to buy 4 weeks to get a decent rate, or can I buy a week at a time), etc. That doesn't even include quality of the teaching; though this seems like a near impossibility to accurately quantify. At best you'd be moving a few percentage points either way.

Right now I've found a new Spanish school relatively close to me that is quite cheap -- presumably because it's new, as my area is gentrifying rapidamente. I've also contacted a girl my age who works for herself. She seems good; I'm meeting with her for half an hour tomorrow to find out. I'm deciding on picking between the two, or possibly doing the school for a few weeks and then the girl. I figure the class will introduce me to a few people, and then the girl can teach me stuff beyond that. In fact, I'm considering hiring her just to go stand in line with me and translate so I can open a bank account.* Plus, potentially I could meet her friends, which could be fun.

* Technically you can open a bank account here, but the bank employees may not know it, and trip reports indicate that they don't really care much in discovering the answer.