Present I am a J1 student at Delta Connection Academy (DCA) in Sanford,Orlando (Florida)....
I am doing my 6 first exams in jaa atpl next week,and we have been having groundschool every day with all these subjects...Theres a total grounschool of 7-8 months which covers all the 14 atpl subjects....
DCA have a pure JAA program which gives you all the JAA ratings (including atpl) you will need plus in cooperation with Atlantic flight training in coventry...Plus the FAA PPL and IR which you need to fly in the us,and work as an instructor here...
We have quite a few british people at our school...Many of them prefer to do the atpl here,while some again prefer to do it back in england because they want to stay closer to home,and not "waste" 8 months of the J1 visa on studying atpl instead of earning hours as an instructor....
You can start from scratch at DCA, but I would actually recommend that you get your JAA ppl back home (honestly,it is not thaaaaat much more expensive), and also maybe your atpl back home!?!?!?! And the FAA ppl is a joke, you learn a lot more if doing the jaa ppl which will help you later in the atpl...
Dont know if this helped you anything,just wanted to share my wage opinion....