CATS support, at the end of the day this is an open forum, for people to exchange opinions freely. I have no axe to grind and generally have been happy with CATS, but I have benefited a great deal from reading other peoples' opinions on various issues, and am therefore entitled to express my own opinions in relation to CATS. Espescially where this might help someone who is deciding on a school to use. Obviously those opinions should be taken to be worth precisely what the reader is paying for them!
It has not been reported to us how the Quick Question area is not user friendly!
It was on the feedback form I submitted at the last brushup. Just my opinion obviously, but one that was largely echoed by other students I met. It's not that bad - just less user friendly than that provided by rivals. Doesn't matter as most people use more than one QB anyway.
It is wrong to state that there is no proper feedback.
I stand by this I'm afriad. A lot of the difficult questions have no explanations, and quite a lot of the explanations are poorly written and confusing. If you want to see examples of better explanations I would say look at ATPL online and aviationexam.com. I emphasise again this is just my view as a CATS student using various questionbanks alongside the CATS offering.
We do not endorse ANY question bank other than our own which is used as an adjunct to training
There is no reason to subscribe to another unless you are convinced to do so
I'm sure that's the official line but aviationexam was recommended by a member of CATS staff at a brushup. This was meant with good intentions to try and help the class and I'm certainly not going to name and shame the individual concerned.
Our Study Guides ARE the most up to date and edited almost daily.
The changes are uploaded at convenient time points and Printed Study Guides are updated at ecah print run and since we print to order the changes come through quite rapidly within months
Again this is a matter of opinion, but in my view the online guides could be improved by proper indexing so you can more easily find where a topic is located to read up more on the subject. In terms of the writing, the clarity of explanation on the whole was better (in my opinion) in the Bristol notes (although certain topics were better in the CATS books). As a general point I think having more than one set of notes helps with understanding as you can read two alternative explanations of tricky points.
Also on the online system, it would be useful if the questionbank could link back to the study guides so you can identify and quickly read up on weak areas.
As you rightly say CATS is very competitive on pricing, and I think people accept that when looking at the materials. The flexibility offered is also excellent.
Right, I'm off to bed!