Whether you are looking for an acting coach or teacher or a modeling school, talk to former and current students, audit classes and try to interview the prospective teacher first. If you can’t meet the teacher personally, check out his or her resumé—before you sign up.

There are people at modeling schools who tell aspiring models who is and who is not agency ready. How do modeling school staff know who is "agency ready"? A modeling school is not an agency. If they are not an agency, they don't book models.

If they don't book models, they don't know if the clients considered a model ready or not. And if they don't know if the clients considered a model ready or not, they are in no position to say who is and who is not "agency ready."

If modeling school employees and representatives cannot convince prospective models they are unprepared to approach agencies and get modeling jobs through agencies, they will have no students. Therefore it is to be expected that modeling schools are going to exploit the conflict of interest and lie, deceive, and trick aspiring models into believing they are unfit to model.
Modeling schools are accountable to noone. There is nothing to prevent them from exploiting the conflict of interest once, frequently, or all the time. There are no laws governing education at modeling schools. The industry, as already noted, has no standards. Modeling schools have no standards. Modeling school teachers have no standards.

A school is not an agency!
Aspiring models have been confused in the past, assuming a school was an agency. Even though the school may not call itself an agency, those who are unfamiliar with the modeling industry have made the mistake of assuming some modeling schools were modeling agencies.
This has happened, for example, with John Casablancas career centers. John Casablancas used to be the leader of an agency (Elite), and many aspiring models associated his past with the present situation. John Casablancas Career Centers, however, are not modeling agencies, and Mr. Casablancas is no longer at Elite. He reportedly left the Elite agency in 2000.
Just as some potential models have made a mistake without coercion, others have been led to believe a school was an agency, because the school acted as if it was an agency, behaving similarly to agencies by using "model scouts," open calls, and telling the young people they had been "selected."

Why do aspiring models go to modeling schools if they are not necessary? Why do they pay hundreds or thousands of dollars in the hopes of getting signed by and work though a modeling agency after attending a modeling school?
Very often it is simply because the prospective models do not know they can directly access the agencies on their own without payment.

Few people enrolled at modeling schools, or signed up by scam agencies, know about “open calls” at modeling agencies. At least once a week, model managers and agents have an open call — a period of time when they look over people off the street who want to know if they have a chance. Open calls are great places to start, because you will get free evaluations by experienced agents. Prospective models are required to bring a few snapshots with them to open calls.