Average course length

[My names Turkish]

How long does the average ATPL course run for? I am currently doing a 6 month course at the moment and coming from a very average educational backgroung am struggling a fair bit with it. I think most people would find it fairly tight for time. How many of you out there did a 6 month course and finished it within the 6 months? Whats the longest course out there. I reckon closer to a year would have been better for me.

[redsnail]

Did a full time 6 month course. Passed all 14 first go.
Knackered at the end of it though.

[My names Turkish]

Fair play, your sharper then me, although thats not really a compliment either:( What sort of background were you coming from. E.g college, aviation?

[TRon]

I'd say the average is around 8 months but budget for a year. I wouldn't put too much stay on people's background educationally. I know it has been done to death but you cant really tell too much by that as it is purely based on so many factors.

It is so specialised and you cant blag any of it like Degrees and A-Levels as it is simply a pass or fail.

I wouldn't worry too much, the only way you are going to fathom how hard it all is is when you get there as different people will tell you different things.

[redsnail]

Umm, college?
What's that?
I had an Australian ATPL with time on a few turboprops before attempting the JAR thingo. Still took some effort to shift countries and live somewhere new. Especially with a very sick (terminal actually) parent back home.
That just made me lift my game some more.

[My names Turkish]

I had an Australian ATPL with time on a few turboprops

Would have said that was a somewhat significent factor! How did you forget to mention that the first time?

[Send Clowns]

Turkish

You are not alone. Part of my job is to give ad-hoc training to individuals or small groups of people who have been struggling. I see a lot, as I specialise in Gen Nav, one of the subjects many people have difficuty with. They come from all sorts of bakgrounds, all schools, full-time and distance learning.

On the other hand I have known a student who had left school at 16ish to be a farmer, came to us 20 years later and passed the lot first time in the usual 6 months. It can be done.

Good luck!

[My names Turkish]

Hmmm, Maybe looking for you in another few months then...

[Send Clowns]

Hope you don't need it! If you need any advice in the meantime, don't hesitate to send me a querry by PM. I have actually sat all the exams, so can help in most subjects.

Good luck :) !

[redsnail]

I answered the question you asked. This is something that helped me pass the exams.
The original question didn't ask for any background info.

[My names Turkish]

I know, but I meant to ask. So there:E

[redsnail]

A couple of my class mates passed first go too. Some had uni degrees, others just worked intelligently.
A few dropped one or two subjects and got them in the second hit. Some had degrees, others didn't.

[witchdoctor]

Don't sweat it if you consider yourself to be of less than stunning academic ability.

My course of 15 had a real mixed bag of abilities and backgrounds, but only 4 of them had to resit anything and that was only 6 exams. Not bad out of 210 papers. They all passed the resits at the first attempt too.

Total time in groundschool was 26 weeks including a couple of weeks of solid revision with the instructors.

Your biggest advantage is if you find any of it remotely interesting as this will help you to make the time to study outside of the classroom. Most of it is a memory test rather than a test of knowledge, but there are a few tricky papers where a good understanding of the subject is needed to figure out the answer.