Brian,
I did indeed take all my written exams before I started. The link that Adam shared for “Preparing for Your Airman Knowledge Test” is exactly what I followed as well as FAA Written Exams - Trust the Process. I was fully enrolled in ATP when I took the tests which did provide me access to their Guided Independent Study videos as well as their Elevate ground lessons which did provide a fair amount of background knowledge on the questions in the PAR. For the rest of the written exams, I used Sheppard Air - they are about $50 for each of the test guides and you have to actually call them. Once you’ve completed one test bank with them, they do give a discount, I believe they also give a discount specifically to ATP students. IRA was the most difficult test for me and one of the largest banks of questions to study and memorize. Sheppard will tell you that the goal isn’t to just memorize the questions and answers, that you can dive as deep into the information as you want, and they do provide you with all the information to better understand things, but rote memorization is the way to go. Using their study method, which I won’t get into here but is specifically briefed before you start any of their study programs, I got 90s or above on all the tests. They will also tell you that the IRA study guide ONLY covers the IRA test but this is not accurate - the IRA and the FII share a question bank, differing by very few questions. It is possible for you to get some questions on the FII that you haven’t seen on the IRA but I actually scored better on the FII than I did on the IRA.
So far my experience at Tucson has been awesome. We have some great instructors, the planes are usually all available for flight, and all the students work really great with each other and help each other out.
I’ll continue to post updates as I’m able to. I’m now in the Cross-Country portion of training. I’ve got one more cross-country simulator session and then I will have 2 dual-cross country flights, meaning I’ll fly the route with my instructor, after that, I’ll have a night flight then I’ll have my cross-country eval with the lead instructor prior to being approved to fly the cross-country flights solo. The program is going very quick and requires a lot of dedication and independent study - you definitely have to put in the work to capture all the knowledge required.
I’m happy to answer any other questions you have!
Good luck!
-Steve