The Culinary Institute of America — Local services in Town of Hyde Park

If you are an international student who wants to study at the CIA, I suggest you read my experience before deciding whether to study at this school or not.

The CIA claims to be a non-profit school, but the school's system is unreasonable, as if it is a school that makes money for commercial interests rather than for the academic quality of students. The school forces students to buy meal plans, even if you live off campus. The meal plan system is also quite unreasonable. You bought the ingredients for your tuition to practice in class, but the school asked you to use the points of the meal plan to buy back the dishes you cooked in class again, that is, double charge. Usually the points of meal plan disappear on weekends, so even if students don’t want to buy things on campus, they are forced to spend some, causing a lot of food waste. At the same time, the points of the meal plan do not mean that everything can be bought, even if the ratio of it to cash is 1:1, the things you can buy are greatly restricted.

The cost of the graduation ceremony. Before COVID-19, the school forced students to pay $300. Now the graduation ceremony has become online, and many services have disappeared. The school still charges students $300, their reasons are administrative cost such as degree audits, conferring of the degree, updating records, communication with governmental agencies and the cost of the diploma ( printing and shipping). Are these services not available in normal universities? This is really a joke. For this fee, they have different opinions each time, but at the same time it is not like students clearly explain the source of this fee. If you don't pay this fee, you will not get your diploma.

During the period of online courses, schools did not dare to open up the grading system for professors, because after the conversion to online courses, the quality of education dropped greatly. Some courses did not even have lectures, and professors used several YouTube videos as teaching materials. If you want to throw tuition into the water, this is a great place. Although I am an alumnus of the CIA, I really feel sad that the school system is so bad. This is why very few alumni of our school donate resources to the CIA. I believe that under the same tuition, there must be better choices. The CIA in my mind is not the number one culinary school. Even if they say it is, they have to do a good job and work harder to prove that they have this title. This school really makes me feel...

We were at CIA three times on a recent trip as it was one of the main reasons for us visiting the Hudson Valley. We took the tour and had Dinner at American Bounty and Bocuse. The tour was fine but you don't get to see a whole lot. My wife and I both agreed that the best part was the beginning in a classroom where you were given the history and went through a tasting exercise that was very enlightening. Our first dinner was at American Bounty, The food was excellent but the service was really poor. The girl waiting on us vanished after taking our order and was not seen again until long after we were finished eating when the bill finally came. Besides that, the server who brought our cocktails spilled quite a bit on the table and didn't bother to clean it up. What's worse is that when the food came, those servers also did not clean up the spill but set our plates right in it. Also when we first placed our order I told the waitress that we would be ordering a bottle of wine to go with dinner after the cocktails but since she was missing we never got it. Our second dinner was at Bocuse and that was a totally different experience. Food was every bit as good as at American Bounty if not better and we enjoyed the choices more. The Atmosphere was more to our liking as you are not in a huge room and feels a lot more private and quiet. The service was outstanding. It was obvious the waiters were trying very hard to make it a perfect dining experience. Observing the room told me why everything was running so smoothly The floor manager/instructor in the restaurant was right on top of things and always present. She was helping any of the students who needed it and teaching them during the service. I will come back again and I am sure Bocuse will be were I...

We visited The Italian restaurant last night as a party of 6 hosting an IBM account executive and her partner, who PREVIOUSLY entertained clients there. To start, the waitress knew nothing about the wine offerings and we finally got someone with a little knowledge of the list to help in our selections. For the non-drinker in our party his only choice was water, which was offered infrequently. When it was poured, a large amount was spilled into the handbag of our guest, with minimal apology. The wine was finally served after the antipasto, which was very late in coming, and offered few choices and small amounts. The utensil to serve it was apparently for salad and made it impossible to cut the buratta or other cheese which was an inch of Parmesan. We were also served a bread basket which contained 4 slices and 2 small crusts of ciabatta. The salad and entrees were served quite a bit later after trying to get our waitress’s attention and being told brusquely that she was too busy. Second servings had to be requested rather than offered and twice one of our party was skipped and we, again, had to try to get the attention of a server. The final touch came after 4 of our party ordered coffee and then a server came around offering to top off semi full cups. 3 of the 4 accepted the “refills” and we were then charged $32 for 8 cups of coffee. Finally, the 20% service charge that we had not expected was added to our bill for very inadequate service and a handbag full of ice water. We will never visit the CIA again and will share our experience with others before they subject themselves and their clients to this...