I did an IMC rating (in an Aerobatic C152) for fun many decades ago; as I recall, apart from level flight under the hood it included recovery from (very) unusual attitudes, stalls and fully-developed spins using T&S, DG and ASI only (others blanked off), climbing and descending Rate 1 turns, maintaining a stated holding pattern (level and descending), doing a join overhead and let-down approach down to 500 ft using that procedure where you called repeatedly for QDMs and mentally plotted where you were relative to the runway, join overhead and let-down approach procedure to 500 ft on the ADF, take-off from start of roll (using the DG), turn and climb on course, all done firmly under the hood. Maybe it's more difficult these days, but I hope that it still has all those requirements or the modern equivalent, to produce a competent PPL.
The rating paid off handsomely when I got caught out by nightfall and cloud on the way to Le Touquet a year or two later (through stupidity, but that's not the point) and again when I had a engine failure (of the only engine) while IMC in cloud over the Italian mountains on route Naples - Brindisi. You could say that over-confidence due to the rating played its part in being IMC over mountains in the first place for that one, but it surely saved my life.
Among other reasons, lack of IMC competence was possibly a cause of the deaths of a PPL and his passengers in a single-engine aircraft, in a tragedy a few miles east of Exeter in the 1980's. Unable to maintain or increase height, while flying in cloud, due to icing and clearly increasingly stressed (judging by the tone of the RT, I was in the tower) he lost control and crashed. Had he been able to retain control and descend straight on the vector suggested by ATC he should have come out of cloud and icing conditions safely.
Do the rating. Without it you are missing an essential skill. It's as simple as that.
Last edited by old,not bold; 2nd Jun 2013 at 13:30.