Appearance Enhancement Licensing Areas and Overlapping Hours

As a result of requests for clarification, the following guidance is offered. After consultation with the field, a chart has been developed that identifies allowable hours that crossover from the recommended cosmetology curriculum to other appearance enhancement disciplines. Situations have arisen where students who have decided to change their program of study from cosmetology to another appearance enhancement program area have inquired whether hours already completed can count towards the new program area. Because of the variation in how the cosmetology curriculum is delivered, not all hours may be acceptable in the new appearance enhancement program the student is entering. This chart is intended to be a guide for instructors and CTE program administrators to provide individual students with appropriate number of hour credit.

For example, a student who completes approximately 500 hours of a Cosmetology I program (year one of a two year program) may choose instead to pursue the esthetics program (600 hours) leading to the esthetics license. The following chart of recommended allowable hours can be used to determine which appearance enhancement content areas and hours overlap between cosmetology and esthetics. Instructors should keep accurate records of all hours completed successfully by students and be able to attest to the comparability of the content hours when documenting student hours for New York State licensing purposes.

*Minimum hours needed for state licensing.
Grayed out areas indicate no overlap in hours.