My belief is *the MCC is there to teach the student on how to act in a multicrew enviorment - it's not designed to teach him/her how to fly the aircraft or for the purpose of preparing them for a sim assessment.
On my course, and I don't know if this is typical of an MCC course we had a number of emergency's thrown at us and it was encouraged to make full use of the autopilot and then solve the problem acting as a crew - which was hard work!
If potential students want to gain maximum exposure hand flying the aircraft with the view of improving there chances in a sim assessment in my opinion they won't gain the maxiumum benefit of the course.
Also piloting skills if you don't use them you loose them so to speak. I know when I come back of a holiday it takes me a couple of sectors to get back into the swing of things. *Now take a 200 hr pilot , it could be servral months before he gets a sim assessent at which point he/she won't have the same skill level when they finished the course.
For that reason I would find the right course at the right price learn as much as you can on the mcc and then when you get an interview hire a sim and have an one or two hrs practice.