I don’t want to take a gap year and try again, if I want to jump out into the business without a degree, how do I do it? Does anyone know? Or have any advice?
Are you near an urban area or willing to relocate to one?
Not near one, unless if you count three hours away from Atlanta. I’m not sure if I am going to relocate to one or not.
Unless there’s a solid acting program (non-college) or a thriving stage or screen industry within a reasonable distance of you, I can’t think of how you’ll be able to jump into the business. You don’t mention whether you got into a college academically but not artistically (that you can afford), but you could go to college with a different major. There are plenty of colleges that have open auditions for their shows, or student-run acting experiences (whether student films or a student run theater club) that could keep you in the acting world, even if you’re not majoring in theater.
One possibility would be to apply to schools with late application deadlines and non-audition theatre programs. No, you won’t be getting into NYU, Michigan, Fordham, BU, etc. – but then you already didn’t get into those places, right? There are several schools with applications deadlines as late as April 1 or May 1 (http://blog.prepscholar.com/colleges-with-late-application-deadlines-complete-list). While some of these (e.g. Nebraska) require an audition, others (e.g. University of Arizona) have BA Theatre programs that are still accepting auditions. I won’t pretend to know the list of all late-application non-audition theatre programs, but it won’t take more than an hour of time to come up with a list of possibilities.
If you really want to try to break into the business without going to college, that’s a whole other topic…