How to check out a beauty school before you pay
“Public” and “private” tell you how a school is funded, not how good it is. The public network is consistent because it is standardised. The private sector runs from serious institutions with real clinical floors down to a product distributor holding weekend courses in a rented room — and both call themselves schools.
So the useful question is not which sector, but how to inspect the specific school in front of you. This page is the checklist. If you are still deciding between the routes themselves, that is a different question, answered in private esthetics course or the DEP.
What the two sectors actually are
| Public network | Private schools | |
|---|---|---|
| Programme | A standardised vocational programme leading to a recognised diploma | Set by each school. Varies enormously between providers |
| Consistency | High — you broadly know what you are getting | None across the sector. You must assess each one individually |
| Cost | Publicly subsidised, generally eligible for student aid | Paid privately, usually without student aid |
| Flexibility | Fixed intakes and largely daytime schedules | Often evenings, weekends and rolling starts |
| What you must verify | Mostly logistics — intake dates, campus, prerequisites | Almost everything below |
We are a private academy. That is exactly why we would rather hand you the inspection list than a brochure — a school that welcomes the questions below is telling you something, and so is one that does not.
The seven checks
- Ask exactly what document you receive, and who issues it. A ministry-recognised diploma and a school's own attestation are different things. Both can be worth having. Being told clearly which one it is matters more than which one it is.
- Get the programme outline in writing, with hours. Total hours, and separately, supervised hands-on hours on live models. If nobody will put the second number in writing, you have your answer.
- Ask to visit while a class is running. Not a tour of an empty room on a Sunday. Watch how many students are around one model, and whether the instructor is teaching or supervising a video.
- Ask who teaches, and whether they still treat clients. Someone who left the floor a decade ago teaches a decade-old practice.
- Ask to speak to two recent graduates. And ask what happened to someone who did not finish. A school that cannot or will not answer that has told you how it handles difficulty.
- Read the contract before the excitement. Refund terms, cancellation, what happens if you fall ill, what happens if the school closes mid-programme, whether payments are staged against progress.
- Check the kit. Is equipment included, what does it consist of, who owns it if you leave, and are you obliged to buy supplies from the school afterwards?
Signs you are looking at a product distributor rather than a school
- The curriculum is organised around brands rather than around competencies. A certificate naming a product line is a marketing asset for the manufacturer.
- The course exists to qualify you to buy a device, and the device is the real product.
- Training happens only on the days a supplier representative is in town.
- There is no written outline, only a schedule and a price.
- Everything is taught on classmates or mannequins. Practising on other students is normal early on; finishing a programme without ever working on a stranger is not.
None of this makes brand training worthless — product-specific training is genuinely useful once you already have the underlying craft. The problem is only when it is sold as the craft.
Comparing two schools you actually like
Put both on the same page and compare four things: supervised hours on live models, class size, who is in the room teaching, and what is written in the contract. Everything else — the premises, the branding, the founder's story, the social media — is noise relative to those four.
If the numbers are close, the tiebreaker worth using is the honesty test: ask each school who it would not recommend its programme to. The one that can answer has thought about it.
What no school can promise you
- A job. No school controls hiring.
- An income figure. Public wage data for the occupation, with its reference period, is on what estheticians actually earn.
- A legal right to practise. The core work is not regulated in Quebec, so none is required — and none can be granted. The practical consequences are in becoming an esthetician in Quebec.
- That the certificate is recognised everywhere. Ask specifically where it is recognised, and by whom.
Where to find us
Downtown Montreal — 2365 rue Saint-Patrick, Unit A5
Laval — 1655 boulevard de l'Avenir
Saint-Léonard — 5045 rue Jean-Talon Est
West Island — 45 boulevard Brunswick, Dollard-des-Ormeaux
This page is general information, not legal or financial advice. Programme recognition, funding rules and school accreditation change — verify current details directly with the institution and with the relevant government body before enrolling anywhere, including here.
