Your selection of a school of acting will depend primarily on what your goals for your career and your acting are after you've graduated.

If your main goal is simply to act, and not to pursue an actual career then your schools location isn't going to be of paramount importance, however if your goal is to get into one of the major avenues of the craft such as theater, television, movies or even local theatre productions, the deciding factor may be the location of the school.

If you want to break into a theater district such as NYC or Chicago in short order, you might choose to keep your search for schools in those areas, while one who wishes only to do local theater and do it well would be well advised to keep their selection of a school closer to home.

Some of the areas that would seem to be the obvious choices for those of you wishing to break into theater and television in a bigger way would be Los Angeles and New York, because they are closer to the major markets, however in reality there are some excellent schools that are located in many areas across the US and some excellent schools outside the United States as well.

Beyond your selection of location for the school it will also be important to you to choose what type of school will be best for your particular purposes.

While a four year college will offer training in acting in consort with other, perhaps broader areas, with a liberal arts program, the vocational school, with an emphasis on what you are looking for might be a better choice for you.

A few things that you should bear in mind regardless of where you choose to go:

** Institution's facilities (do they meet the standards of the industry?)
** Faculty and/or instructors (do they have experience in the acting industry?),
** Type of instruction (hands-on with limited class sizes)
** Level of exposure (does the school have contacts with any of the professionals in the industry)
** Class or course costs, what type aid is available.

Last but certainly not least the school should be accredited with some kind of agency. The school should not require a large payment up front, nor should it require that the new student sign any kind of binding contract with them, however most reputable schools will require that you audition in order to attend their school.