<p>Okay. My junior in HS wants to go to culinary school.</p>
<p>I want her to go to college first. We will pay for both. She doesn’t have to choose between them. </p>
<p>I don’t care if she goes to the CIA after she goes to college, and I don’t care if she goes to one of the top schools where she has been recruited to play soccer, and I don’t even care if she plays soccer. I’m fine with her being done with that.</p>
<p>But I want her to go to college. </p>
<p>End rant.</p>
<p>Why is it so important for her to go to college? People that have a passion for food have a passion for food and that’s fine. </p>
<p>Does she have a talent for cooking? Why do you want to force her to go to college if that’s not somewhere she wants to go? </p>
<p>If she doesn’t want to go to college, she likely won’t do well there as it’s not where her passions are. If she’s merely on the fence about it then pushing her to go to college wouldn’t be a bad idea IMO.</p>
<p>I don’t want to “force” her, and I won’t.</p>
<p>I want her to go to college, because she can go to cooking school afterwards, and because being a chef is a brutal career imho. I want her to have more options and not less, and I believe that there is no rush to go to culinary school. </p>
<p>I would never not pay for culinary school. I just want her to have as many options available to her as she gets older.</p>
<p>She’d do fine in college. She doesn’t have to work very hard to do well in school, and she wouldn’t even apply to a “rigorous” school. I think she would like the business curriculum.</p>
<p>But, I’m not sure if I’m right, anyway.</p>
<p>I know nothing about culinary school. Can she do both? Go to culinary school and cc?</p>
<p>xposted – culinary school and a business degree sound like a great combo. Or how 'bout a degree in hotel and restaurant mgmt?</p>
<p>I did college first, restaurant business (both as an employee/chef and later as an owner/chef) and then at age 33 I sold my interest in the restaurant and went to law school.</p>
<p>The failure rate in restaurants is HUGE. College can provide access to business, accounting and marketing classes that can give you an better chance. You can be a fabulouis chef and still fail due to lack of business acumen.</p>
<p>The hours for many are not conducive to a stable interpersonal relationship. Those of us with addiction tendencies often find being in the restaurant business difficult to handle. </p>
<p>My point is that perhaps a better way to approach this is to go to college, work in restaurants while in college and get an idea if this is a life that has appeal.</p>
<p>The CIA, which is where she wants to go, is full time, residential.</p>
<p>ETA:</p>
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<p>Maybe you should call her. :p</p>
<p>Give it some time. I think it’s okay for you to suggest college, and at least explain why you feel that it’s important. But I don’t think that confronting her about it is the best option. </p>
<p>She may change her mind. How long has she wanted to go to culinary school? Maybe when all her friends are applying in the fall she will feel different. I don’t think it would be out of line for you to insist that she at least applies a few places, so that come spring of senior year it’s an option. However, if she really wants culinary school then I feel it would be counterproductive to make her go to college. If she doesn’t want to be there she won’t get much out of it.</p>
<p>How about Johnson & Wales?</p>
<p>Tell her to give college a try for a year. Without experiencing it, she can’t say whether that’s what she wants or not. I went to college with a guy who now is a famous chef, owns his own restaurant outside of Napa, etc. I know he doesn’t regret his college experience.</p>
<p>I am a teenager who is going to enroll in a liberal arts college soon. I am interested in fashion/costume design but I want to get a liberal arts education before thinking about enrolling in a design school. I personally think that (especially in this economy and job market) think that the more education the better.</p>
<p>You should explain to your daughter that not only is it a good idea to go to college to have a fall back option, but it is also a good thing to have to supplement a culinary degree- for example she could get a degree in business or something which would help her in opening a restaurant or something later on in her life!</p>
<p>Would you feel OK telling her that you will be happy to pay for her to go to college if and when she ever wants to go? </p>
<p>She may not see the point in going now, but a few years from now she may want a business degree or a degree in nutrition or in sustainable, organic agriculture, or something else she couldn’t envision right now. A college degree might make more sense for her then rather than now.</p>
<p>Cross posted with a bunch of really good posts!</p>
<p>You do have to take business courses while at CIA. </p>
<p>Maybe she would like to do culinary now and pursue a degree later on. Or she might go there and realize it’s not for her. </p>
<p>Does the idea of college appeal to her in the slightest?</p>
<p>oh poetgrl! A couple who are some of my best friends have three daughters, two of whom went ivy league and one of whom never ever liked school, even though she was an excellent student. Her mom talked her out of leaving at 16 and getting a GED. So they were pretty sure they couldn’t talk her into college lol. She was interested in horses (had been riding, showing, training since forever) and went to what I am told is the best equestrian training program in the world 
After that she had a couple of jobs in her field but really had trouble supporting herself and didn’t see any future. Her parents were not going to set her up in the horse business, though they were happy to pay for the equestrian school and then college. </p>
<p>She went to college and now has a masters degree. And can afford her horse/horses. She is still under 30.</p>
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<p>This might be a good conversation to have.</p>
<p>You can’t really “tell” this one what to do, which I love about her, but not right now.</p>
<p>Tell her that even Anthony Bourdain gave Vassar a couple of years.</p>
<p>My nephew is a recent-ish grad of the CIA in Hyde Park. It’s an amazing place, the best of its kind, but it’s brutal. It’s not the kind of coming of age, life experience environment that most colleges provide. It also doesn’t allow for much freedom to choose and experiment. I’m totally with you about college first. Not because I wouldn’t support a culinary career, but because one can easily go back to culinary school, but it would be very hard to get the college experience if that was put second.</p>
<p>One of my daughter’s friends went to college to please her parents and is now in a culinary training program to please herself.</p>
<p>Although she had to postpone starting her career for several years, I think her college degree is valuable. You never know where your career will take you. Hers might take her into aspects of the food service business where being a college graduate would be an advantage.</p>
<p>Another option would be to look for a college program that at least relates to her interest in a culinary career. Here, I am thinking of the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell, which has a lot of restaurant-related courses. But it’s not easy to get admitted to the Cornell hotel school.</p>
<p>I think this relates to something I always tell my daughters, which is that they can have, do, be, anything they want if they are willing to put in the work, but they can’t have, do, be everything they want at exactly the same time. There are important and valuable choices in life that must be prioritized and scheduled.</p>
<p>Yes, you are right on target, Zoosermom.</p>
<p>It’s not that I dont want her to go to culinary school and become a chef. It’s just that I don’t want her to give up more than she needs to give up in order to have that happen for her.</p>
<p>College, imho, is more than just school. There’s a whole lot of stuff going on there, including growing up and maturing, figuring yourself out, etc…, which I think she could do better at a place full of people who are all studying different things than she is.</p>
<p>It’s not so much the degree as the experience, although I think the degree goes into the positive column, as well.</p>
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<p>Well, someone who has been inside needs to talk to her. </p>
<p>My FIL was the head of food services for a university spanning over 5 decades. He did college first, then the food industry. He told me shortly before he died that he had been offered a key position (head chef) at the Waldorf-Astoria in NY in the 1950s but turned it down because of what he felt it would do to his young family. </p>
<p>In addition to his duties at the University, he wrote cookbooks, was hired by food companies as a consultant to develop food products and was on personal terms with Helen Corbett and the Brennan family. He always said that college was essential since it gave him the background to be able to handle budgets, control labor costs, etc. and gave him “polish” enough to be attractive to high-end restaurants, hotels and institutions. </p>
<p>As a side note, we have the communication from President Kennedy asking him to join “Food for Peace.”</p>