My personal advice is to go to school first and get a liberal arts education, and then if you want to pursue acting, go to graduate school.
I wouldn't be where I am today without the amazing public arts education that I had.
For some students, especially in the sciences, the knowledge gained in college may be directly relevant to graduate study. For almost all students, a liberal arts education works in subtle ways to create a web of knowledge that will illumine problems and enlighten judgment on innumerable occasions in later life.
My parents had an old-fashioned ideal of college, that four years at a liberal arts college should be a liberal arts education.
The ability to recognize opportunities and move in new - and sometimes unexpected - directions will benefit you no matter your interests or aspirations. A liberal arts education is designed to equip students for just such flexibility and imagination.
An arts education helps build academic skills and increase academic performance, while also providing alternative opportunities to reward the skills of children who learn differently.
I do think that a general liberal arts education is very important, particularly in an uncertain changing world.
Scientific research and other studies have demonstrated that arts education can enhance American students' math and language skills and improve test scores which in turn increase chances of higher education and good jobs in the future.
The value of an arts education is widely accepted, especially in California.
I had a liberal arts education at Amherst College where I had two majors, mathematics and philosophy.