New England Hair Academy

Love teachers. Hate school itself. Hate manager. Love awards once a month. Paid 1200 $ for a kit while others paid 900 $… Whatever. Happy to be out, glad made it through!

Okay, so let me start off by saying, hair school sucks. No matter where you go, it’s going to be a pain. With that said, this review is a note to future cosmetologists looking for the right school. I was lucky enough to have found my salon job before I enrolled at NEHA, so I knew what to look for — a quality education.
When I interviewed at NEHA, I was told some very impressive things about the school. I was told that you would learn 12 different haircuts right off the bat, that everyone was very committed to making sure the students graduate ready to get onto the floor at a salon, basically giving me the impression that this school was serious business.
What I came to find out about the school, is that while yes, they do teach you 12 different types of haircuts, the school operates on a cyclical enrollment, meaning you can start your first day on a hair cutting rotation. Which is exactly what happened with me. Now, having a month of learning how to cut was great! However, I had two more months to go in the ‘classroom’ without touching my shears, and I basically forgot a significant amount of it.
After three months you move down to the ‘clinic’, where you start performing services on actual clients. Hair schools are notorious for attracting a very ‘interesting’ clientele, but that of course comes with the territory. Be prepared to deal with people who don’t want to pay anything for your services, people who expect professional results from a student, and people who are just plain insane. There are plenty of normal people who come in, but I wouldn’t count on it all the time.
My real issue with NEHA is that the deciding factor for me to go there was the quality of education I was expecting to receive. You’re paying 13k for school, you expect to get some quality materials and a decent education, right? Well, half of the items in my kit broke the first month, including EVERY perm rod, so you can imagine how difficult my 32 perms were with broken rods. The kit was really laughable, I replaced almost everything in it immediately, making it $ 800 down the toilet. As far as the classes go, I wouldn’t necessarily blame the school entirely for the awful curriculum. The real problem lies in the fact that you’re only in school for 1000 hours, which frankly, is not enough. The worst part of it all was when I and others raised complaints about wanting to learn more about cuts or foils, we were told «We have to follow the curriculum» and «You’ll learn everything out in the field anyways». I’m sorry but that is NOT acceptable. I expect the school to have an interesting and challenging curriculum, also, I’m PAYING you to teach me!
Some teachers are willing to help you if you really want to learn, but you really have to take it upon yourself to make the most of it. Its disgusting how poorly the staff and students are treated. Honestly, It was very evident that the owner’s are more concerned with money than education, and it’s really sickening to think that the students are treated like preschoolers and the staff hasn’t gotten a raise in years.
With all that said, hair school is probably going to suck no matter where you go in Massachusetts, so here’s a few things to watch out for if you do end up going here:
— if you are a 230 student, because ‘they have to follow the curriculum’, be prepared to sit through all the same lessons two or three times, instead of utilizing that time to learn something new.
— be prepared to have to fingerprint clock in every day and night. They SWEAR the computer doesn’t make mistakes, so even if you do clock in or out on time, there’s a possibility you won’t get your hours.
— there will probably be many clerical issues dealing with your financial aid.
— you’re not going to learn much, and they’ll justify the lack of quality education they promised you by telling you «you learn everything out in the field anyways».

If you are currently looking for a school for cosmetology run fay, far away from this place!!! I am a recent graduate of this school, when i came in for orientation the people at admissions of course made it sound like this school was great and my best option, which is of course their job. I got sucked in and started this school in April of 2012. That was the biggest mistake of my life! I have many reasons this school SUCKS the first one being the owner is by far the biggest scam artist ever. He will do anything to take your money. The policy is you get 100 free hrs and if you don’t use it you will receive $ 500 if you go over the 100 hrs you owe $ 10 an hr. let me tell you he closes his school for nothing so students owe money or lose their perfect attendance. He almost didn’t even close the school for the hurricane sandy in a state of emergency. They recently installed a new clocking in/​out system where you have to scan your finger print to punch in and out. They are so money hungry they would accuse students who did 100% punch in or out of not doing it so they would owe at least $ 20, they did this to me on my last week accusing me of not punching out for 3 days which i know for a fact i did. The best part is that they have cameras right at the clocking machine and refuse to take 3 minutes of their day to review whether or not you punched in or out. «the system does no wrong» Another thing they did for money is my cheap name tag broke because its so cheaply made and they made me pay a measly $ 3 to replace it. The next thing is they offer financial aide which is great but my friend had financial aide and had a monthly payment plan for the remaining balance, she fell behind on some payments and they failed to tell her that if she falls behind her financial aide would get taken away. She found out she lost it when it was already gone. When she lost her financial aide she owed so much money she would never be able to pay them back and because of that they chose to «suspend» her 2 days before her last day until her balance is payed off, which again came with no warning. The financial Aide lady also messed up on my financial aide putting the wrong social security number on my 3^rd grant. It got fixed but that shouldn’t have even been an issue in the first place. Another problem with the payment office is this barber was approved for financial aide, paid his remaining balance and a few days before he graduated they told him he didn’t qualify for financial aide after all so he ended up owing a good amount. Another problem with this school is their kits they supply you with. About 90% of my kit was crap. My hair dryer was weak and took forever to dry the hair, they blow up and the barbers get better hair dryers than us, which is weird. the straightener doesn’t even work on my already straight hair never mind trying to straighten curly hair with it. the brushes sucked, the nail stuff sucked, everything in there for the most part was useless and i had to go buy all new stuff. Something else that was torturous about this school is once you get down to the clinic you are on an every other day rotation. Which means one day one class would be upstairs and the other class would be downstairs and it rotates everyday. Let me just say the downstairs classrooms are small. cramped, and have NO windows its like jail. The desks are so small they don’t even fit our books and couldn’t even fit a 6^th grader. They say that cleaning people come a few times a week which is a lie because the downstairs classroom is filthy rotten! The clinic is very unorganized, you can never find the color you need, you can never find your clients consultation card and there is always a problem with clean towels it is super embarrassing. I think it’s funny that i have seen the owner come see what goes on in the clinic once in my whole 11 months there but he some how comes up with a new pointless, pathetic rule every week. Another downfall with this school is you only get a month to learn every single cut, 95% of students leave not knowing how to give a good haircut. Something else that is really unfair is some of the teachers pick favorites and if these certain teachers don’t like you, your time there will be even worse. ONE good thing about my school was my two amazing teachers ms. paula and ms. naggat if it were not for them i would have flat out quit. For the most part all the teachers are very dedicated, love their job, and are very helpful but its sad since the owner treats his staff like shit and refuse to give them a raise, so not only are they under paid they are treated like shit. I wish i could write more positive things about this school but there are none. there are more negative things i have not wrote but i am sure you get the point to not come to this school! thank you for reading

This review has nothing to do with the service of the students, and it’s not because I am a graduate of this school, it’s a review for anyone who is looking into beauty schools to go to. I want to start with a few words for whoever has taken the time to write a bad review. If you were a customer here and had a bad experience, it’s almost impossible to be fair about writing a bad review because students come and go every month (they enroll monthly), so the chances of you having the same student twice (unless you request) is slim. I have seen some terrible results, and I’ve seen some so great, the customer requests that same student every time. Also, the fact that you’re paying for an inexperienced student to put buzzers or scissors to your head for the same price as a sandwich, probably doesn’t say much about you other than you’re a cheap idiot expecting professional results from an unlicensed student. Shame on you.
For future Cosmetologists: I graduated from this school a couple months ago. I had a tour at Empire (Malden) and NEHA and right away knew NEHA was the better choice. Everyone has their own experience depending on who they are. Mine was better than some others I know, but there are a few things to consider. They seem like they really care about you and your situation, but they really just want your money. The owner is a cheap, control freak, asshole who treats his students and staff like farm animals. During my 7 months there, the only real improvements that the school received was the perfectly fine facing of the building went from regular brick siding to Stucco for no apparent reason. The inside however, is very outdated and in poor condition. The kit I received (included in my tuition) was just OK. Few items were good quality, majority was the cheapest possible products, but they got me through. (Students had to buy extra supplies with our own money.) For the first 3 months I was in a Freshman classroom, the last 4 was in a different building around the corner at the Student Salon. I enrolled in May, and luckily started with a class of 8 students. My instructor Karen was attentive and caring. Around September, a much bigger amount of students enrolled and the class had about 30 students which changes a lot. Luckily, by that point I had already spent my first month in the student clinic. We are also required to wear these giant, one sized smocks (included in our kit) that were a filthy maroon color and fell apart after my first day. They were so big in fact, mine fell inches from the floor. The newer students received better quality, better fitted, black smocks, which were an extra $ 30 for older students wanting new ones, to replace the maroon ones. I did not give them a dollar more. The owner made some of the craziest rules I’ve ever heard of, some very unfair and just, peculiar to even care to make a rule for. (He needs to retire and move far, very far away.) I was in the day program (thank God), which have different teachers than night program but either way you’ll meet them. My teachers were great, talented Stylists, but I feel the school should provide classes to update their knowledge and skills for the students sake. The school manager who’s job is not easy, I also found to be not so helpful to some issues I had, at times I felt very unimportant and a bother to her. Some students were treated differently than others.
All in all, I would recommend this school but there are some things that were at times, a deal breaker for me and if I had not put my life savings into already, would have called it quits. In the end, you’re there for you, keep to yourself, do your homework, study and get yourself outta there. I’m now a licensed Cosmetologist, excited about where my career will take me. Good luck to you, whoever you are, I hope this review was helpful.

In short, «Do not go here»
First mistake. I went looking for a training school to get work done at a reasonable price. Didn’t wanna damage my hair but was brave enough to get my nails done. Tried a manicure. Ok, so it was only $ 7 Given the price was cheap. The place looked cheap! The floors were dirty. Didn’t even look like they had any customers. They were just doing each other’s hair and gossiping. No one was really paying attention to me. I waited almost 30 min. A student came to me and told me to sit on a «sad looking chair». She was talking to her classmates how much she hates doing nails… While I’m sitting right there! She didn’t even remove my old nail polish properly but was making faces because her nail polish was coming off! She had five options for me to choose from Neon green, hot pink, black, blue and glitter gold.
I’m more upset about the one hour of my life which can never get back:(