I promised myself I'd stop reading this site, let alone posting, but here goes...
Please, please, please- if you've already got some finance available, consider doing a PPL first. 18 months ago I was more than ready to have my parents sign the house over to get me into a well known integrated sausage factory. Being young and with some time to spare however I decided to get a part time job and earn myself a PPL, partly as a hobby and partly to 'improve my chances' of being selected for the privilege of being financially crippled by these fine institutions (Cabair and PTC were on my list, frighteningly
).
A couple of thousand pounds later and I've packed the flying in indefinitely, something that my starry-eyed wannabe self from two years ago would have thought impossible. Like many wannabes I was 100% certain I would make myself a pilot one day whatever it took, but a health scare and a discussion with the doctor about the symptoms of depression finally snapped me out of the bonkers cycle of working every available extra shift for every extra 0.1 hours in a Warrior.
I was young, naive and had no appreciation for the amount of money I was throwing at flying. Now I'm happier, healthier and more sociable than I ever was before; I've got two fantastic new ground-bound hobbies that I can enjoy for far more than my PPL's paltry two hours on a good month, and funnily enough I've still got money left over each month to save towards a comfortable life at university. I enjoyed my PPL training immensely, but now I think I've filled my boots and I don't need to take my flying any further. I got to fly ten solo hours, and as thrilling and memorable as they were, I think they were enough to satisfy my flying bug.
If I ever go back to wanting to be a professional pilot I've no doubt proved I suffer from a chronic lack of commitment to flying, and frankly I don't care anymore. I had a freak attack of common sense and realised that I had lost the will to continue running myself into the ground for the sake of an hour a fortnight in a 30 year old spam can. It no doubt knocked a couple of points off my A Level results as well. Your circumstances will be different, but you too could possibly have similar second thoughts about flying, and I'm glad I had them £5k down the road rather than £80k.
Moral of my meagre story, and the message I would love to give to every young wannabe, is to do a PPL (or an NPPL!) first whatever your ambitions. It might confirm your desire to fly, it might one day turn out to be as far as you want to take flying, as it did in my case. Either way it'll be a hell of a lot of fun if you've got the wallet for it. For me, £80,000 is an awful lot of money to pay for a vocational qualification in a jobs market that is widely acknowledged to be saturated with new recruit. Do a PPL and confirm it's what you want to do.
GAPAN aptitude tests as well- highly recommended and a fun day out to boot.
Good luck anyway!