Passed recently and at my center now, I would refrain from reading these message boards or even asking questions about pass/fail rates throughout the entirety of the course but I’ll break it down a bit so you can read this and then hopefully never read anything like this or ask questions that would mess you up mentally and have you thinking about anything other than atc.
OTS HIRE
Basics- basics was a eye opener for me because reading forums like this I thought it was going to be a breeze. I went into basics kind of cocky and was humbled with a 60 on my first non graded exam, these tests are designed to be tricky and have you thinking in more than one direction. The tests won’t ask you a definition about certain things because they know that’s what we’re studying at home they want you to grasp everything. One word of advice that I would stress is that during basics and your enroute/terminal portion of training you need to understand and ask as many questions as possible until you have the concepts DOWN and dont be afraid of being that guy/girl in your class that asks a bunch of questions because if you don’t the only one that’s going to suffer is your self and maybe the class because 9 times out of 10 any question you have everyone else has too, their just afraid to look dumb. Study with a group purchase the basics
study guide from this site (extremely helpful and I’m not a sponsor lol) and get everyone’s numbers at the beginning because they are going to be your family for the next few months and you should be fine.
Non radar- BUCKLE DOWN! Non radar can be easy or hard depending on who your teacher is and how many questions you ask to grasp the concepts. This will give you an understanding of what atc is all about and how fun it can be! especially if you love playing video games and need to have some stimulate for your brain throughout the day. During this portion of the class you need to go home and take strips from the study room back to your place and at the apt complex’s where you guys are living and beat this thing into your head until the light bulb comes on (and it will trust me). It’s not that bad and the evaluators and teachers are all fair with every grade that’s given but put it like this, you go through 46 scenarios during non radar 23 that you actually do and 23 where your the mock pilot shows for the R-side to do his thing, you have so many opportunities to grasp everything and so many chances and problems 20-23 are pretty insane practice problems but you’ll do it believe me!
Tests in between- just do it and study you’ll have your study method from basics bring it over to these tests and you’ll average a 30+ if your decent on non-radar.
Radar- everything that everyone is saying on here is completely true there’s only so much that you can study and you get to a point less than half way through radar where you don’t know what else to study. There should be a chart in every radar room that tells you what your learning for the day you go in for problems and what is going to be on the radar problems tomorrow. Ask questions during your break in between those problems on the next days eval and how to do them and how to execute. You’ll feel fine during the radar problems and like it’s a breeze but I told most of my instructors that were behind me to only be there if I asked a question because sometimes they help so much that they are the ones technically doing the problems for you and I personally can’t learn that way. Every day I came in there with the game time mind set and I put the pressure on my self every time and got in a flow. YOUR GOING TO BE NERVOUS JUST EMBRACE IT! You’ll find out during the Non radar evals and radar Evals that l once you sit down you start shaking or forgetting everything that you learned you just need to buckle down for this part and once the problem starts running and you start warming up you forget about it even being an eval because your training instincts kick in and the real you will come out to play! Treat it like a video game and go in there with that mind set to learn every move, combination and trick that best suit your play style and steal little tips and tricks from every instructor and LOOK AT THAT RADAR SCOPE because you will not miss any point outs if you do! As soon as you finish your AC/CHARACTERISTICS test go to that practice radar room grab everyone in the classes ahead of you that are in there studying and grinding like you will be for the next 2-3 weeks and get them to teach you things and stay in there until you can put in a flight plan and do point outs with ease and I promise you that you’ll pass this course and anyone that keeps talking about failing rates stay away from them. oh and never tell anyone where you want to go and be open to the fact that you can be anywhere and it’s a blessing to even have the opportunity to be there.
Final results- Our class had 16/17 pass and we were all close as hell and our teacher treated us like we were their sons and daughters and I can tell you now all grades are fair no one is out to get you, they just want the best candidates to be the next controllers to keep their friends and family safe! Just shoot for the stars all the time and if you happen to end up on the moon so be it!! Best of luck to you all!