# Culinary school- What to expect???



## austin_ (Jun 17, 2006)

I'm thinking about joining a "culinary arts" college, but I really don't know what to expect. Are you in the kitchen all day? Is it just like cooking classes every day? Do you do any cook-offs? I'm confused about how this all works out. P.S, I'm planning on going to CCA, California Culinary Academy. Don't really know if all cooking colleges are similar or not...


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## boosehound (Jul 17, 2006)

you should realy look into what exactly they do at that school, and perhaps visit some other schools. if it isnt possible to make it to the ast coast to visit cia, jwu or neci visit the web sites, those are the top schools anyway. at neci (were i went) you get a lot of hands on experience, the class sizes are very very small the chefs are great and the program over all i thought was awsom


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## chefsusanl (Feb 15, 2006)

Research the school that you would like to attend, talk to their admissions staff, talk to some of the students in the Culinary program, and make sure that this is something that you really want to do!


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## kent2981 (Jul 15, 2006)

i can tell you how my classes went
first 2-3 weeks were classroom stuff, recipe conversions, food cost, sanitation, management. . . . 
then we were in the kitchen all day for the next2 months. i went to a comm college, so we worked in groups but every now and then, we were given a market basket, where 3 people would be given all the same ingredients and we iron chefed it. 1 hour use everything at least once it was a lot of fun, wish i could do it more often


peace


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## spencerdebra (Jun 4, 2006)

Make sure you visit the school, audit a class. I live in San Francisco and can attest to the fact the CCA now and the one I went to are very different. It is becoming big business to recruit students to culinary school. My opinion, the quality of training at the CCA has really diminished. Many of the folks have no idea what they are getting into. Recently I was speaking with a woman who was 56, loves cooking, wanted to make a career change from high tech. She had no idea the hours involved in the job, the low pay (compared to corporate America management positions, which she was coming from), the noise, action, stress. When I shared with her graduates start between $13 and $15 an hour, she couldn't believe it. She thought going to a culinary school and paying over $50k for the 18 months, would place her in a position to afford to support herself. 

I learned alot in culinary school, it was an experience I would never have passed up. Enjoy, but make sure to do your due diligence.


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