Researching Beauty Schools Online: What You Should Look For

Choosing the right beauty school is critical for your pursuit of a successful career in beauty. This is because the right school will provide you with skills, tools and opportunities to help you launch your beauty career, whereas the wrong one could do very little to help you.

Fortunately, modern technology has made it easy to learn more about possible beauty schools; most of the information you need can be found online. To help optimize your beauty school research on the web, we have provided you with a comprehensive list of everything you should look for when you research beauty schools online.

Quality Instructors

It won’t matter what types of courses and educational tools a school offers if their instructors cannot teach you. That is why you must ensure that they have quality instructors. When you research beauty schools online, you can find out whether or not a school has good instructors by taking a look at the Testimonials page on a school’s website. This often includes detailed descriptions of the student’s experiences with instructors.

Free Virtual Tours

When you research beauty schools online, you should be able to get a detailed perspective of what being at the school will be like. Keep an eye out for virtual tours of the school, which should be offered for free.

Hands-on Training Opportunities

Textbooks exist to help you learn the basics of the technical elements of beauty. However, beauty is a hands-on industry; in order for you to be prepared for this, a hands-on education in beauty is a must. Make sure that beauty school doesn’t just teach out of a textbook by looking closely at their course offerings and other training services. Many good beauty schools will, for example, provide student spa and salon services to the local community, which allows students to gain real, on the job, experience right at the school,

A Wide Variety of Areas to Study

Beauty is a wide-reaching industry with plenty of fields that you can choose to focus on. If you already know what type of beauty career that you want to pursue, it’s important that the school can teach you about that field. For example not all beauty schools offer medical esthetics, electrolysis, laser tech, medical esthetics, electrolysis and laser tech courses. The schools’ websites should have a ‘Courses‘ section that makes finding this out easy.

Flexible Hours

Not everyone can attend school during the daytime. Fortunately, there are beauty schools out there that can accommodate students’ schedules by having flexible hours. If you need an accommodating schedule, take a look at a beauty school’s course catalog, which should be available online.

Mentoring Resources

With the best beauty schools, your education goes beyond the classroom lessons — and does not end after you graduate. When you research beauty schools online, look out for a mention of mentoring resources. This is usually mentioned in the ‘General Information’ section of a school’s website.

A Valid License From the Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing

Beauty schools must be certified to teach by Utah’s Division of Occupational an Professional Licensing. A ‘Consumer Disclosure’ section on the school’s website will normally inform you of licensure; this will often include contact information of the Division of Occupational and professional licensing so that you can verify everything yourself.

Business Development Programs

No matter what type of beauty you would like to practice, you need some business knowledge to succeed — even if you never plan on owning your own salon, barbershop or spa. As such, it is important that your beauty school includes business development programs as a part of their curriculum. You can usually find information about this on the course catalog or the ‘Class Information’ page.

An Education in Customer Service

In addition to business knowledge, you will also need to know how to manage customers. Make sure that you look for courses and programs that will help you develop your customer service skills as you browse the course catalog.

Beauty Show Opportunities

Beauty shows are great opportunities to showcase your talent and creativity, while pushing your skills for styling hair, makeup, etc. A good beauty school will often have students who successfully competed in beauty shows; this is often mentioned in the ‘In the Media’ section of the website.

Preparation for Licensure

In order to have a career in beauty, you need to be professionally licensed. Although you have to earn your license yourself, your beauty school should help you by preparing you to take the necessary steps.

Involvement in the Local Community

Beauty schools that are involved in the local community will have great networking opportunities for you by virtue of the connections that community involvement develops. When you research beauty schools online, check out the ‘News and Events’ section, where they will tout their recent contributions to the local community.

Financial Aid and Other Forms of Tuition Assistance

Beauty school isn’t free. However; this doesn’t mean that you will end up having to foot the whole bill upfront. Some of the best beauty schools will offer financial aid in the form of student loans, payment plans and even discounts. They will also direct you to scholarship opportunities that can significantly reduce the costs.

The Ability to Accept Transfer Students

If you have already begun beauty school, but want to continue your education somewhere else, you shouldn’t have to start from scratch. That is why good beauty schools accept transfer students. When you research beauty schools online, you can quickly find this out by checking the ‘General Information’ page on the school’s website.

A Great Reputation Among Local Businesses

A salon, spa or barbershop is much more likely to hire you if the school that you attend has a reputation for producing great students. Fortunately, you don’t have to go out and contact every local business in the beauty industry to find this out. You can check the ‘In the Media’ section of the school’s website, where the school will often discuss the success of their current students.

Successful Graduates

First and foremost, you want to make sure that your beauty school is going to prepare you to have a long and successful career in beauty. You can see how good they are at doing this by taking a look at how their past graduates are doing. Check the ‘Graduates’ section of the school’s website. This will contain a list of success stories who graduated from the school. If the school is any good, then the list will be fairly solid.

Post-Graduation Employment Assistance

A good beauty school will not throw you to the wolves after you graduate. They will leverage all of the great relationships that they have developed with businesses to help you get a job as soon as possible. This assistance should include (but not be limited to) application and interview preparation, connections directly with potential employers and job boards.

Start Your Beauty School Search at Cameo College

Cameo College is a top beauty school in Utah, and our team can help you get your beauty career started, or take it to the next level. To learn more, call 385.290.4254 or click here to schedule your free tour.