I'm applying to colleges soon. I hope to major in New Media with a focus on web design. The majority of these colleges ask for a portfolio displaying 10-20 examples of my work without real specificity in terms of what to put in it.

I'm curious what I should and should not include. Would stylized photo manipulations be acceptable if they were created using famous actors as opposed to anonymous stock models? Is showing a web design made using a free web host be a bad idea, as it wasn't something made from scratch? On the same note, would examples of code be acceptable if they had elements from free-to-use coding resources?

If you have advice on what I should most definitely include and what I should most definitely NOT include, I would love to hear it. I'm quite new to putting together a portfolio of this magnitude, so I'm worried I'm going to screw up.

Thank you!