I went to Acme School of Aeronautics, the blue test guilds were a must. What you did when you when there is that you had to get the exam out of the way first. You studied a lot and I mean a lot and there was two ground instructors that did nothing but help you prepare to take the exam. This was before the freedom of Information act, a good grade on an exam was 85 and dam few did better than 88 or 89 back then. Now they just publish the exam and guys get 100. Back then you did an instrument rating in a 172 for 24 bucks an hour with an Instructor, that was 1976. They had a Bell 47 for guys doing helicopter for around 90 bucks and a Piper Aztec for multi for 124 an hour. The School was run by Retired Airforce Pilots, the guy that wrote the Blue Test guides was a Airforce Colonel. He would go take a test and get a 69 on it and then write test like questions for the study area's.
As for the question of where to go and what have you, well FAA is a no BS way of getting it done, because flying is not considered to be a big deal in the States, There is a lot of Aviation here, more in some of the smaller states than in some Countries. Europe is a whole different ball game, they tend to make it very time consuming and costly. Why? I have no Idea. The US is a good place to go to flight school, since 9/11 its become more of a pain as far as paper work goes. Canada is also a good place to fly and I would think the same for OZ and NZ.