Top Culinary Schools Prepare You for a Great Career

Cooking has always been my favorite hobby. Nothing relaxes me more than spending a couple hours in the kitchen experimenting with a bunch of different ingredients to come up with a delicious dish to serve my friends and family. From appetizers to main courses and desserts, I've got a real knack for coming up with tasty twists on traditional fare. In fact, everyone who knows me thinks that I would make an excellent chef, and they're constantly urging me to check out the top culinary schools in the country. Now I think I'm finally ready to follow that advice.

What made me change my mind? Well, the biggest factor is that the office job I've been working at for the past four or five years is so completely unsatisfying. I can't imagine doing this for very much longer, so a career change is definitely in order. Another reason that I'm going to apply to top culinary schools is that I actually have a bit of money saved up and can afford to take some time off work in order to devote 100 percent of my attention to my classes. I know that making the grade at any of the country's top culinary schools will be an extremely difficult task, so I've got to be sure that I'm ready for the challenge.

Anyway, now that I've decided to take the plunge, I have to try to figure out which institution would be right for me. Since none of the top culinary schools are located in my immediate area, I'm going to have to pull up my roots and move to a new city, which is obviously a pretty big deal. That means I have to do everything in my power to ensure that I choose the right school from the beginning -- otherwise, I'll be in a tough situation.

In order to facilitate my research, I've purchased several books that contain profiles of top culinary schools, and have also been double-checking some things online. I've also created a list of criteria that I expect to find in the school I attend (such as a favorable student to teacher ratio, affordable tuition, range of classes available, reputation in the industry, and job placement assistance), and am painstakingly sifting through the possibilities in hopes of finding a good match. I'm not even close to finished yet, but that's ok. I want to take my time with such a major decision as this one.

Although I'm not done with my search yet, I'm excited about some of the results I've seen thus far. A few of these top culinary schools look positively amazing, and any training I receive from them is sure to pay off huge dividends when I try to land my first job. I can't wait to get more information about these institutions so I can send off my application packages as soon as possible. With any luck, in just a few months I'll be well on my way to learning how to be a gourmet chef!