I fundamentally disagree with you Prophead. I have a lot of experience of training both Integrated Course students and Modular students. You are right in saying that the 100 odd hours building a modular student must complete between the PPL and starting the approved training is important. However, it is extremely rare that DIY, unstructured hours building is of any great benefit to the modular student. Time and time again, student pilots present for their CPL or IR at an approved school and are hopelessly unprepared. This is nothing necessarily to do with their aptitude, rather a result of poor training.
PPL courses are of a very variable standard; those completed in just a few weeks seem to be particularly poor, probably because the skills and procedures learnt are not committed to long-term memory and are forgotten as quickly as they are acquired. Typically, at that point, the student pilot has about 50 hours including about 10 PIC. As the license skill tests on the later approved training will add 5hrs PIC at most, the next 100hrs before one can commence a CPL course have to contain no less than 85hrs PIC. So much of the hours building tends to be unsupervised and unstructured, resulting in inadequately prepared entrants to CPL or IR courses.
In contrast the equivalent phase of an integrated course is structured and supervised and, particularly since the reduction of the SPIC and PIC requirements on an integrated course from 50 and 100 hrs to 20 and 70 hrs respectively, it is much more relevant to the training that will follow.
Yes of course it can be damned good fun charging around the World exercising the privileges of your newly acquired PPL. However, if your objective is to become a professional pilot then get yourself on a professional course, and leave the jollies to the amateurs.
This is not an integrated vs modular rant; you can achieve just the same result on a structured modular course as an integrated course. What it is, is advice to avoid DIY training.
I am no longer an employee of any FTO; I'm semi-retired, working freelance as an examiner, and therefore my advice comes without bias.
So called 'cheaper' modular training can all too often turn out to be much more expensive, because the student has squandered the first 150 hours and then finds them self needed retraining in an hideously expensive environment just as the budget starts to get tight.
Get the foundations right and the more expensive 'advanced' training will go smoothly. Get it wrong and you'll regret it all the way to the bank (oh, I forgot, they don't make loans any more).
And Burger, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you, but beware advice on PPRuNe. Some of it is excellent, some based on wide experience, but others have either personal agendas, or limited experience and are trying to justify their own training and career choices without real knowledge of the subject.
Look up sciolist in the dictionary.
Coo, that was a bit of a rant; sorry and Prophead, I'm not having a go at you; I just disagree with your advice, based on considerable experience.