SFLY,
The assessment of your skills & aptitude is intended to reduce risk to a number of stakeholders.
- Reduces YOUR risk of not being able to cope with intensive training, which may subsequently result in you failing, or not gaining employment post-training thus putting you into financial debt.
- Reduces risk to the FTO. On integrated courses of training, there is little room and few resources available to accommodate students who fall behind or need extra training because they aren't making the mark.
- Reduces risk to the airlines. Airlines who feed off the supply of new pilots from FTOs need some form of guarantee that they can expect new recruits to possess skill-sets and attributes that are sought after by the airline. Allot of airlines today will only consider FTOs have have pre-enrollment assessments in place.
Hope that helps!