johnson and wales vs. pennsylvania culinary institute

Well i have heard, not really sure, but i was looking for a short moment before i came to the cia, at le cordon bleu, again, im not sure if im right so dont take my word for it, but i heard that they dont give a degree they give a certificate. So if thats the case for to j&w.

Another school that is really good, which happend to be my backup school incase i didnt get into the CIA was Paul Smiths up in northern NY. Check that out its worth a shot if it isnt to late.

Anyway if you go to j&w dont go to RI campus. its a **** hole.

The first school I looked at was PCI. All in all, seemed like a good program. My parents didn't let me go though because campus security wasn't very good (Campus is located in the heart of Pittsburgh)

As for JnW, I haven't heard anything about them. As a CIA student, I've only heard smack about them.

Good Luck

Just wanted to say good luck in your search. I was in a similar situation when deciding where I wanted to go about 7 years ago. I chose Johnson and Wales Charleston, SC campus (when it was still there) and haven't looked back. I've been to and have seen the Charlotte campus and the labs there are pretty impressive and still fairly new, only 3 years old. As for the comment above you're always going to find people who don't belong in the business no matter what school they went to. IMO its all about what you put into it. School will teach you the basics and get your foot in the door at places but its up to you after, no matter where you go... Some things that I didn't like were how ***** backwards the labs were, an example is, there is no one lab that teaches you knife skills and depending on your schedule you can be in cooking labs before you even build a solid foundation with stocks and sauces and like I said before knife skills. I didnt like that at all. I would have preferred to start from square one and build from there especially if you only have some experience and a lot of people going to school now have none. But the culinary educators were great. Lots of opportunities to go different places and work for co-ops and the labs and exposure were top notch and very intense. And besides living in a different part of the country was a great experience and I have met some long time friends even though I was a northerner living down south. LOL. Sorry for the wall of text but I hope you get a chance to read this and good luck with your search.

J & W

Here is the case for J&W, it is a degree granting university with all the perks you will need for a good career. I still keep in touch with the school and us the resources. (I graduated a looooong time ago!)