1.2 Eligibility, the 600-Hour Training Curriculum & Application Pathway

Basic Eligibility Requirements

Before you can sit for either NY esthetician exam, you need to meet a small set of baseline requirements:

• Minimum age: 17 years old. New York sets its esthetician licensing age floor lower than the 18-year minimum used by many other states' appearance-enhancement licenses.
• Completion of an NYSDOS-approved 600-hour esthetics training program at a licensed school, OR equivalent training completed through an approved apprenticeship or out-of-state program that NYSDOS has evaluated and accepted as equivalent.
• Health certification from a licensed physician, physician assistant (PA), or nurse practitioner (NP), confirming the candidate is free from any contagious or infectious disease that would create a public-health risk to clients.
• Completion of a 1-hour Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (DV/SA) Awareness training, required before licensure. This reflects the reality that estheticians, like many personal-care professionals, are in a position to notice signs of abuse in clients and should know how to respond appropriately and what resources are available.

Application Pathway, In Order

While schools and candidates sometimes complete pieces of this out of strict sequence, the logical and required order is:

1. Complete your 600-hour training program (or the equivalent apprenticeship/out-of-state pathway).
2. Obtain your health certification from a physician, PA, or NP.
3. Complete the 1-hour DV/SA Awareness training.
4. Submit your license application to NYSDOS through the online e-Licensing system, along with proof of training completion, health certification, and DV/SA training completion.
5. Schedule and pass both the written and practical exams through your My NY.gov Online Services account.

Only after all five steps are satisfied — training, health certification, DV/SA training, application, and both exams passed — does NYSDOS issue the esthetician license.

A note on the apprenticeship and out-of-state pathway: not every candidate trains at a New York school. If you completed an approved apprenticeship or trained at a school in another state, NYSDOS evaluates that training against the 600-hour, 18-subject §162.2 outline before it counts toward your NY application. Training that falls short in total hours or is missing entire required subject areas typically needs to be supplemented at a NY-approved school before you're cleared to schedule exams — so if you're coming from out of state, request an equivalency review early rather than assuming your prior hours will transfer one-for-one.

The 600-Hour Curriculum: 19 NYCRR §162.2

New York doesn't leave the esthetics curriculum up to individual schools to design from scratch. The regulation 19 NYCRR §162.2 lays out exactly which subjects must be taught and how many hours must be devoted to each one, for a total of 600 hours. This is the official blueprint for everything a licensed NY esthetics school must teach — and, not coincidentally, it's also the blueprint NYSDOS draws from when writing your written exam.

A few things jump out when you look at this table as a study planner rather than just a school syllabus:

• Facial and Body Procedures (240 hours, 40% of the total) dominates the curriculum. This is the hands-on core of esthetics training — cleansing, steaming, extractions, masks, massage, and body treatments — and it's the largest single subject area by a wide margin.
• Make-Up Techniques (70 hours) and Superfluous Hair (60 hours) are the next-largest blocks, reflecting how much of an esthetician's actual client-facing work involves hair removal and makeup application.
• Anatomy and Physiology (30 hours) and Business Practices (30 hours) are tied for the next tier — a reminder that this is a licensed, health-adjacent profession with real business responsibilities, not just a beauty service.
• The "Unassigned" 23 hours are not a mystery gap in the curriculum — they represent hours schools have discretion to allocate to any of the other named subject areas, based on their own program design or areas where their students need extra time. NYSDOS doesn't mandate what the unassigned hours cover; it just requires the school to account for them within the listed categories.

Why This Table Matters for Your Exam Prep

This hour breakdown isn't just a school-licensing technicality — it's the closest thing to an official content weighting that NYSDOS publishes for what you're expected to know. The rest of this study guide is organized to walk through essentially every one of these 18 named subject areas, roughly in proportion to how much instructional weight the state gives them: infection control and sanitation get their own chapter, anatomy/physiology and skin science get two chapters, facial/body procedures and equipment get a full chapter, hair removal and makeup each get a chapter, and business practices/career skills get a chapter. If a subject shows up in this table, expect it to show up somewhere in your written exam prep.