Choosing the right beauty school to attend can be kind of tricky especially if you're new to the beauty industry. I'll be honest with you too in saying that the beauty industry is strange. You can look at reviews but what do you check for? I find it interesting that most reviews are one star (if the person is really angry with the school) and five stars (if the person got caught up in the excitement of doing something new. But if you want to look deeper look at some of the people leaving those reviews.

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Many people leave reviews, even really good reviews, but when you look at their personal information they aren't working in either a salon or a spa. Could they not pass the state board exam? Could they not find a job with their current level of training? This added information kind of changes your initial opinion about the place, doesn't it?

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Now look at the instructors at the school. Look up their reputations. Does the person that you want to train you have a DUI, or two DUIs, or maybe three DUIs? Many states will not issue a license to a person with felonies or serious misdemeanors. Not Alaska! Does the person have collection after collection or eviction after eviction? If they can't make a good living within the beauty industry and they've been doing this for a while, how are they ever going to teach you how to make a good living? 

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Look at the school and look at the instructors. Are they licensed? You're thinking "Ha ha", but it happens more than you would think. Some people just don't manage this very well and they simply don't have licenses, or they have expired licenses. Also, these people are supposed to be teaching you on the clinic floor but all-of-a-sudden a client walks in and POOF! Now you're sitting there without any instructor but the class wasn't over. This happens a lot at other schools.

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WHAT are they going to be teaching you? Where did they get their training? Many instructors (especially in Alaska) went to the school down the street and got a very marginal education from the other instructor with a marginal education and neither of these "instructors" have taken their education very seriously. Do they have a state-level education? A national-level education, or an international-level education?  The quality of education your instructor has is going to be extremely important to the level of education that you're going to receive from them. You can't teach what you don't know! HOW LONG have they been instructors?

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Some people lie. I've seen schools claim that they're "making essential oils" in their theory class when in reality they bought existing essential oils and mixed them together to get a particular scent. When you "make" an essential oil you must use a distiller, you must take bio-mass and heat it to extract hydrosols and essential oils from this. In reality, this is MAKING essential oils, not simply mining them together. Some schools claim that they're the ONLY school teaching sugaring when they've only been in business half a dozen years and we've been making, teaching, and selling sugaring products for almost 30 years and we've been trained in five different countries on how to use sugaring products. 

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We might as well talk about all the people who are going to try and talk you out of going to beauty school so you can go to law school, or train to be an architect or to be an accountant. What aren't they telling you? The Information Industry has the highest rate of business failure of all businesses but right after that is... starting a law firm, then starting an accounting business, and then starting an Architectural firm. Oops! They forgot to mention this. These trades have nearly a 25% failure rate in their first year of business and then the failure rates go up by the fifth year. My father gave me a bit of a hard time when I started in the beauty industry. He said to college and be a doctor. I asked him what I would do with all that extra money that I made. He said that my wife would probably spend most of it. I asked him what she would spend it on and he said, buying clothes, makeup, and uh, well, getting her hair done. After that, he never bothered me much about becoming a hairdresser and esthetician.