Hey Lubberto,
I just started my 4th week with ATP at KTKI (McKinney, TX) and I came in with the PAR, IRA, and FII completed. I’m glad I knocked out the PAR ahead of time because my first few weeks have been fairly low-stress. I’m really able to just focus on what we’re actually working on in the plane.
At the beginning of the program, there is a lot of information flying at you. We have ground lessons in the evenings on Zoom for 3 hours, twice a week. In-person ground lessons when the weather doesn’t permit flying. Simulator lessons. And a lot of aviation language, abbreviations, plane parts, etc. to learn. You can definitely handle all of it, but if you were able to take a bit of stress off yourself by getting a few writtens out of the way, I would recommend it. If I could do it again, I would do the commercial test too. I noticed that even though a lot of the information didn’t make much sense to me while I was studying, I actually came in with way more knowledge than I otherwise would have.
I used Logan’s study method as my guide and spent about 2 weeks studying for the PAR, and 2 weeks total studying for the IRA + FII (I scheduled and took the IRA and FII back to back on the same day). Here’s Logan’s post: I finished the first 3 writtens in 4 weeks and so can you
I scored PAR: 95% IRA: 100% FII: 92%
One other caveat that I didn’t know about beforehand is that the questions you miss on your writtens are areas your DPE will spend extra time going through during your FAA check rides. So the better you score, the easier the oral portion of your check rides will be. Now take that with a grain of salt since I haven’t done a check ride yet, it’s just what I’ve heard around the training center. Maybe some of our Mentors can chime in and discuss that.
But let me know if you have any other questions about the first few weeks! It’s been awesome so far, and I have zero regrets choosing ATP!