How competitive are culinary school admissions?

There are 2 kinds of culinary school. The shitty kind where you pay a fuckton and learn to make fancy dishes in only 20 minutes time which is useless in the real world and the good kind that are also a restaurant which gives actual experience working in a kitchen serving guests and also costs less because the college/university is getting free labor.

I did the latter and half the graduates went straight into sous chef positions because the instructors also had a ton of connections. And it only cost like $2000 for the entire course, the textbooks, uniforms, and knives.

Then again I also did the course in a town with a population of 35,000 so my experience may vary.

there are restaurants with "sous chef" positions in towns of 35000?

I live across the street from the CIA in San Antonio so I see the degenerates walk in to class everyday. Dyed hair, nose rings, neck tattoos...truely the trash that had to go to alternative school rather than a normal high school and would suck a dick for a spare cigarette

There where a couple.

Hell I even worked in the only fine dining restaurant in the village I am currently living in with a population of 3,398 and there was a sous chef (although it wasn't me).

So average millenials. Got it.

There will always be undereducated people who worked their way up who thumb their nose at formal education. Always.
Blue collar work is blue collar work, and cooking has always been that role, truly, no matter its celebrity and career attractiveness now, it's still a career field that is filled with, to put it blunty, dropouts. People with learning disabilities, quitter status, kids who did drugs/crimes and it doesn't matter in this career as much. Immigrants who will work for less or harder are also filling kitchens. Just keep this horrible overjudging opinion in mind when you hear people state they laugh at grads, or consider it a waste of money.

Know what you should also consider? management, hospitality
thebestschools.org/rankings/best-hospitality-degree-programs/

You will notice...that top hospitality schools are right next to top culinary schools. CIA is next to Cornell. Food towns like vegas, miami, and washington. You need tourists, monied and educated locals or visitors to support the restaurants and tourist industry that gives you internship possibilities that will get you your resume jobs. It goes hand in hand. You need to just understand your degree will never be a waste of money if it is long, gets finished and was from a good school. Some investor or chain would like you to trust you with a million dollars of investment not because you can sling tacos really good from the truck you renovated but also because you have proven you aren't an idiot for 4 years of hard work.

lol that was probably me. Its true. I never take on c school kids unless its as a favor for another chef. They are some of the worst employees I have ever had.

I don't hire those guys either. TFW all white male BOH and white female FOH because I do all the hiring and it works better that way. Male Maitre d' and bartender though.

>I live across the street from the CIA
BANE?

Line cook here. Most every chef I know started out as a dishwasher. All of the good line cooks I've worked with started as dishwashers. I started as a dishwasher. It is a position that is always hiring somewhere. Bust your ass. Be the guy they call when someone else is sick. Make the chef say " Hey, user is working today, tonight will go well". Be willing to work open to close the whole weekend.

Fact is most restaurants are filled with felons, dropouts, addicts, idiots, illegals and losers. People who don't care about a culinary school degree. Most of the work doesn't need a culinary degree.

Work your way from the bottom up in a kitchen that you want to learn from. For example, I work in a kitchen that catches its own fish. We are on the water and our owners hire charter fisherman on the payroll to catch our fish. We gut and clean them, fillet them and portion them. There is no fresher fish in any restaurant in the area. Maybe you prefer upscale fine dining. Or Classical French, or Italian. Just apply. What ever you do work hard with pride.

And don't fuck servers.

I call BS, I've never yet seen a restaurant in the U.S. that didn't run off the backs of illegals for doing all the scutwork.

Whatever you say, boss. I've been posting here regularly for about a decade now and its not the first time I have talked about this. Look back through some old posts. I'm sure you can find them fairly easily particularly within industry threads. Searching CdC along with it might help since I talked about that a fair amount though I recently got my CEC cert.

I've worked in a few different countries and in many different states. Very very few, maybe even just a couple, hired actual illegals. I am in charge of all the hiring and firing for my restaurant group as well as day to day operations for our flagship restaurant where I primarily work out of. We have some Guatemalans at a couple restaurants and a black guy that I have been working with for years. My staff was hand picked from people I had worked with in the past who I knew would do a good job and could trust. All male BOH just work better together than mixed sex kitchens IME. I don't have to worry about hiring cheap immigrant labor for dish, prep, etc because I have a steady stream of greenhorns that want work experience and are more than happy to do it.

Just go to a trade school

I took a dishwasher job straight out of culinary school to get my foot in the door. It was a nice place, to be certain.
I actually found my culinary school degree was a hindrance when I was first starting out. I wish I had unlimited bankroll to stage somewhere in Europe for 2 years.

I worked in Europe for a while and, as an American, it was a pain in the ass. It was amazing. I loved my time there and I learned a lot to be sure but it was a huge hassle. As someone who grew up reading about these great Michelin starred chefs who trained all across Europe it was always what I wanted to do but I didn't realize how difficult it had become for Americans. For Europeans it is easy as they can travel freely and work all over the place pretty easily. For me that wasn't the case. It varies from country to country but you pretty much have to find a job, apply, get accepted, then go get approval for a work visa at the embassy in your home country, and then move there. If you want to switch countries or even jobs you have to come home and do it all again because you can't apply for the visa if you aren't in your home country. Luckily I had made some decent connections but it was still a huge headache logistically and would definitely be a lot harder for someone straight out of c school or with no experience at all.

I hang out on some professional cooking forum like cheftalk.com or kitchenknifeforums.com and the pro cook there mostly support what has been said in this thread. Not that you don't get taught useful things, but it's not nearly worth the money, it doesn't prepare your for working in a real kitchen and they all complain about the know-it-all attitude many graduates from famous culinary school seem to display so often.

don't even go to culinary school.
do you wanna wash dishes for minimum wage, or wash dishes for minimum wage with $40k+ in debt? just go find a kitchen to work in.

In the latter too, paying around $3000 for classes only. My seniors are all training in top hotels and caterings thanks to our instructors connections. I myself have to simulate a restaurant-setting for my final exam for this semester. My own recipe, my own deco and my own customers.

My (extremely limited) experience with people from culinary school is terrible. I worked as a dishwasher with this girl that went to some restaurant school, she thought she knew everything even though i had worked there a year more than her. She had a aura of undeserved superiority, she thought she was brilliant and if only she was given a chance...
She once tried to tell a cook that had been working in kitchens since she was in diapers (not the adult kind), how to cook an egg.

Another girl from restaurant school got really drunk at a party and really ruined everything.

Fuck culinary school

Same in Pittsburgh. I see those degenerate fags all the time that go to the art institute culinary school.