Sunday, April 20, 2008

How to Choose a Reputable Culinary Arts College

If you are pursuing a career in the culinary arts field, it is important that you choose a reputable [culinary arts college]. There are several reasons for this. In this blog entry we will explore one reason.Attending a culinary arts college is going to be very expensive if you do not land a good job in the field. Any investment into career education is a worthwhile one if you can get out what you put into it.

Not all culinary arts colleges have good reputations. If you are going to pay good money to attend one, you are going to have to do some research up front to determine if the college you are looking into is accredited.Many of the culinary arts colleges listed on this blog are reputable culinary arts colleges. You can check them out by visiting the colleges that interest you perhaps by location or by the brand name that you already recognize. All differ in the amount of money they charge to attend and in the kinds of classes that they offer. You will want to investigate as many as possible and especially check out the reputation of the teachers and their success at job placement once you have finished your degree. Choose carefully and wisely as you will be spending a lot of money to invest in your education.

You definitely will want to be prepared the right way and be in great demand when graduation day comes. It makes no sense to skip the research part up front only to find that when you graduate, you cannot find a job.Another place you can go to is google to do some investigations. Just go to google.com and type in the search term "culinary arts college" and you will get many returns. Take a look at the results you get on the first few pages.

You can also visit: http://www.culinaryartscollegesite.com/ where you will find a video link where you can watch and listen to a chef who attended a culinary arts college and listen to what her experiences have been. There is also more information on culinary arts and general job search at http://www.jobsearchtop10.com When you visit the links on google, look for what certifications the culinary arts colleges have. These certifications are important. I will go into this more in the next blog.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Is the Culinary Arts College You've Chosen Accredited?

In determining what the best culinary arts college site is, you need also to be sure the culinary arts college you have chosen is accredited. The culinary arts field has different accreditation or certification programs that they can be a member of and typically those programs are policing programs that ensure that the colleges are keep up with certain standards. It would be a mistake to overlook this very important fact when choosing a culinary arts college to attend.

One of those accreditation organizations is called the American Culinary Federation Educational Institute (ACFEI). The college itself typically applies for the accreditation when they feel that they meet the best standards of their overall programs, their faculty and their facilities.

You can find out if just about any culinary arts college you want to attend is accredited also by visiting the following link: http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/Search.asp If you don't have the name of the specific college then just look for the state you are interested in and click on search. It will bring up the colleges in your state and you can choose the culinary arts college you have an interest in to see if they are accredited.