So you’ve decided to go to cooking school, but how do you go about picking one? Here are some guidelines:

Location

This is a concern for any type of school you want to attend, not just a culinary school. It can be very easy to run into basic day-to-day survival problems if you enroll in a school without considering the strengths and weaknesses of its location.

Maybe you’re considering a school far from home, perhaps an old and prestigious institution in another country, perhaps someplace with lots of beaches and sunshine. (Certainly places with beaches and sunshine are liable to be tourist destinations, and the tourism industry employs a lot of culinary-program graduates.) If you have family or friends in that region to live with, talk to, and/or help support you, that might be a wonderful adventure. But if you don’t, you should think realistically about whether you’re going to be able to handle all of your expenses, studies, and other responsibilities by yourself, at least until you can make some new friends in the area.

If you’re lucky enough to live near several good schools, which of them is likely to be more convenient for you? Which one is closest to your home? Which one has the best parking and least traffic, or the best access to public transportation? If you’ll be working while you study, which one is nearest to your workplace, or to potential job sites?

If you’ll be living away from home while you attend school, you’ll want to investigate schools’ access to services (stores, restaurants, ATMs, gas stations, Laundromats, schools or daycare if you have children, etc.) and the relative safety of their locations.

Facilities

If you’re able to do so, visit the campus of any cooking school or culinary institute you’re thinking of attending. Do the buildings have adequate lighting, ventilation, heating, and cooling? How good are the kitchens and equipment? How big are the classrooms? Will you be able to practice what you learn — does the school own a restaurant or hotel, or is there an affiliated restaurant or hotel nearby?

Cost

To determine whether a school makes financial sense for you, you will need to make phone calls, ask careful questions, and make thoughtful comparisons. Most culinary schools are very tight-lipped about the costs of their programs, mainly because there’s no standard way of reporting them and it’s very easy to make misleading comparisons. Some schools like to talk about costs on a per-semester or per-year basis; others like to talk about the cost for their entire program as a whole. Some schools only want to talk about your tuition costs; others include what you’ll have to shell out for the uniforms, shoes, books, knives, fees, and/or other costs. When a school official quotes you a number, make sure you understand what’s covered by that number and what isn’t.

Class Size

Generally, the smaller a school’s classes are, the more you’ll be able to directly interact with your instructors. However, if the school is a dedicated cooking school rather than a college or university with standardized tuition costs, smaller classes usually also mean more expense for students. Some exclusive schools limit classes to as few as four students per instructor, and their tuition will reflect that. One standard, adhered to by many schools, specifies no more than 18 students per instructor. In larger schools, or for classes held in classrooms rather than kitchens, 25 to 35 students per instructor is probably closer to the norm. 

Length and Type of Program

Cooking schools and culinary institutes vary greatly in both the length of time it takes to complete their program and graduate, and in what you’ll get (certificate, diploma, degree, etc.) for your trouble.

In most cases, a shorter program will either be more intensive (that is, you’ll have to spend more time per day and/or per week on your studies than you would in a longer program) or more specialized (concentrated on pastry, for example). If a short program is neither intensive nor specialized, don’t expect potential employers to think much of it. Nine months of study at one of Le Cordon Bleu’s own schools can earn you the well-respected “Le Grand Diplôme Le Cordon Bleu,” but some of the non-specialist certificates or diplomas you can get in nine months or less in the USA are of dubious value. By contrast, many one- to two- year programs will confer degrees such as the Associate of Occupational Studies (AOS). Jeff Mack urges students to consider staying in school for a year or more: “The extra time gives you experience in more disciplines and opens up more options for you later.”

Culinary education at a college or university can be a certificate or diploma program, or it can be part of a two- or four-year degree program, often in the form of a major or minor in culinary arts, food sciences, hospitality management, and the like. Some schools even offer postgraduate education (Master’s degrees) in culinary and related disciplines. If you would like to go into a career that requires more grounding in science, such as food chemistry or research, a college or university program is good idea. Also consider that an education at a traditional college or university will involve taking “core courses,” probably including some English, math, science, computers, and arts and humanities. While this might not get you into a well-paying job in the shortest possible time, it might prepare you for life in ways that a career-oriented school might not.

Accreditation

It’s always a good idea to attend an “accredited” school. To be accredited, the school’s finances, facilities, faculty, and procedures have to have been investigated by an educational standards organization and found to meet those standards. In the USA, colleges and universities are accredited by one of the regional accreditation organizations recognized by the U.S. Department. of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation; dedicated cooking schools and culinary institutes are accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology (ACCSCT).

Many culinary programs in the USA are also accredited by the Accrediting Commission of the American Culinary Federation (ACF), which advocates high standards for culinary education. Outside the USA, accreditation will vary in its availability and meaningfulness; investigate carefully.

It should be noted that while many American schools affiliated with the Career Education Corporation (CEC) tout their connection to Le Cordon Bleu (naming their programs “Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts” and so forth), Le Cordon Bleu does not accredit these schools. Instead, the “Le Cordon Bleu” designation means that these schools use the Le Cordon Bleu system. CEC itself, not Le Cordon Bleu, is responsible for assuring that its affiliated schools adhere to the system’s standards. 

Reputation

The relative reputations of different cooking schools and culinary institutes are hard to assess. ACF accreditation is a good recommendation, but that’s just a start. For any given school, it’s easy to ask how much industry experience the instructors have, how many awards they’ve won, and so forth; it’s probably a better idea, though, to ask where their alumni are working and how well they’re doing there.