Never thought id be asking for this type of help. As for most you guys know around here, I come here for help on aviation colleges alot. Most of you know me for my passion for wanting to join the Navy..
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If only I could get into the Naval Academy ...But I have a TON of interest in going to ERAU...yes I know, its a waste of money blah blah blah...Ive looked into other universities you guys have suggested for flying. I was looking into ROTC for Navy or Air Force but over the past few months I think my love for the joining the military might just die down. As my vision right now is 20/475 you can tell that my eyes are COMPLETELY horrible and all I ever hear about is how hard it is to fly for the military and on top of that with eye surgery. My mom tells me the only way I can got to ERAU is if I do ROTC, which is a problem.

My main and only goal is to fly. I want to fly commercial, not military even if I had to choose its commercial. So doing more research someone said look into Community College as its much cheaper. Im not the type of guy who wants to go to a CC, I want to go to a university but it seems most of the universitys are a little hard to get into that have aviation programs besides ERAU. Looking at CC prices they are ALOT cheaper than ERAU and other universitys.

So my question is...is it a good idea to go to CC and then get my ratings and such there for cheaper? How do I get a college degree to become a pilot and what do you usually do after the 2 years in CC with all your ratings?

Its funny how most parents dont want there children to go into the military, but sophmore year/last year I told them about flying and ROTC and now they are encouraging me to do ROTC and saying its the only way it will be able to pay for all this....

Unfortunately they dont know that I have a passion to fly commercial...not really military...but as I know it is hard to become a commercial pilot, im completely certain I will have the courage to achieve it.

Plus it has got to be more fun.

I'll see if I can't give you a couple of tips,

First shameless plug. Have you taken a look at Arizona State University? Our flying program is in cooperation with Mesa Airlines and I believe a good amount of students get a job with them after they graduate. And I know there's at least one guy who got in with Southwest right after he graduated. A few may also be with united. Not too sure on who went where

Other then that, I know the university of North Dakota has a flight program that works out of community colleges. Where they go after that I couldn't tell ya.

But in re-reading your post it makes it look like your not sure about how you're paying for college. So take or leave my above comments.  However think about this. Don't ever let money dictate what you're going to do with your life. That's something I got told time and time again in High School. There are thousands of scholarships available out there. And if you're not qualified for the FAFSA, then get student loans. I know everyone wants to avoid debt but you know.. I'd rather be in debt and have a degree then to be debt free without a degree.

I'm familiar with some of your "higher education adventures"  if I may from previous posts, and the only thing I want to add at this point is:

Make darn sure you have a back-up plan, and make sure that you would be perfectly happy with that back-up plan if something happens that denies you the possibility of a career flying aircraft. The plan can still be aviation related of course. 

Not to be a pessimistic tart, but keep as many options on the table as you can, even when you are in the middle of your flight training. You don't know what could happen down the road, for better or worse.

Best of luck with your career path!

tcco94 wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2010 at 11:57pm:

I'm visiting ERAU in a couple of weeks 

I looked at Bowling Geen State University, and I must say it is by far the best aviation college I have looked at.  (and I have seen almost all north east schools and ERAU). Their aviation program is fairly unknown.

The reason I will most likely go there fo college is cost.  They give out pretty good scholarships and are building a new housing unit for freshmen which is very nice.  The airport is 99% bgsu aircraft traffic and they have a nice terminal and maintence hangar.  The airport is right next to the school too. 

They have step aircraft in which you would go from c172 with gauges and dials to piper archer with gauges and dials then arche with glass cockpit and finially Seminole.

If anything I would check it out.  That's where I plan to go, because I don't have much money ROTC qualifications either. (although they do have a ROTC program there.).

University of North Dakota claims to have to most aircraft out of any university....

Anybody check out Middle Tennessee State University? Discovered there flight program and seems to look really nice. They say the average cost for flying at a university is about $37k but they only have you fly for about $26k...and they recently bought 20 new airplanes...looks like they have a pretty big fleet, and a 727 donated by FedEx (not sure if they fly it or not) but also they said once you graduate and have 500 hours and 100 or 200 of those hours are multi you are guaranteed a interview with American Eagle.

Just thought I'd share since noone has brought up MTSU.

http://www.mtsu.edu/aerospace/index.shtml

BAW0343 wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2010 at 2:19pm:


If I were you, I'd take cost more into consideration, especially at ASU. Tuition/expenses there is now about 33k a year for out of state, plus another 60k or so for their aviation program. On average, Mesa pays their first year right seats about 25k a year. At these rates, you'd be borrowing about eight times more than you should, so expect to still be paying for that with your social security retirement benefits.

tcco94 wrote on Nov 8^th, 2010 at 8:04pm:


The intent of the law was aimed directly at regional airlines.  It was part of a knee jerk reaction by Congress because of the Colgan Air crash in Buffalo, pushed for by families of the victims.  Everybody ignored that the crash was not caused by low time pilots, both had thousands of hours, but it made the families feel like they had made a difference. 

That leaves the problem of getting pilots that 1500 hours.  There are three choices, military, getting paid to fly, and paying for it yourself.  In the getting paid for it category there is always corporate, crop dusting, banner towing, instructing, even flying boxes.  Some of the side effects will be a shortage of qualified pilots for the airlines, which could cause an increase in pay.

tcco,

I took a look at that article, and I will try to help make sense of it all.

To fly aircraft for hire, you must have a commercial pilot's license, which you can do with a minimum of 250 hours.  Before this year, a commercial license was the only requirement to fly as a first officer on a regional aircraft.  The next step is the ATP (Airline Transport Pilot) license, which requires a minimum of 1500 hours.  The new law passed by Congress mandates even first officers must now be an ATP, where before only the captain had to be. 

Obviously this has been hotly debated by the aviation community, as an unreasonable burden on pilots, airlines, and schools.  The article you referenced is about the FAA advisory panel reccommending that university trained pilots (Part 141 flight school) could be exempted from the ATP requirement.  However the same do gooder politicians that created the law in the first place have been adamant that there will be no exceptions to the new law. 

End result, even the FAA is trying to go to bat for the aviation community, but Congress has made up their mind on the issue.  I watched some of the Senate hearings on the Colgan air crash on C-SPAN ( ), and most of the congressmen and women on the board were not open to what was being said.  They were sure it was a training issue, although it has been shown the pilots were both multi-thousand hour pilots.  They just were not paying attention and it bit them.

This is a really unfortunate situation.  We have a group (Congress) who doesn't understand anything about aviation, creating rules that will affect everyone involved in commercial aviation, because they were pressured by a group of grieving families. 

Here is the link to the NTSB report on the crash.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20090213X13613&key=1

tcco94 wrote on Nov 8^th, 2010 at 10:48pm:


Actually the crash had more to do with pilot situational awareness and airspeed control.  They simply got too slow on the approach and failed to recognize the problem and react accordingly.  It is a total bummer about the new rules, and maybe they will get repealed at some point.  It is just one more hurdle to clear for anyone to be an airline pilot.  On the bright side, maybe more people will get deterred from becoming a commercial pilot and that will help you.

tcco94 wrote on Nov 8^th, 2010 at 11:39pm:


You wouldn't say that in 10 years, when you're collecting food stamps just to feed your family.

I'd look a whole lot into public, instate universities and file the sh*t out of your FAFSA and scholarships.

Yes military aviation is extremely competitive, but if you get surgery now and be graduated with a 4.0 and commercial license, I'd think you'd be relatively competitive for flight school (given that the surgery holds).

Even if you don't end up as a pilot candidate, ROTC w/scholarship only has a 4 year active duty service commitment. While you're in college, they'll pay for either your tuition or living expenses (whichever is greater) with allowances for books and whatnots. If you budget yourself well, you might be able to come out with only 50-70k worth of debt. Which is not too bad, since if you send yourself into third-world poverty, you might be able to pay that off by the time you complete your service commitment.

The military will take your entire academic record into consideration. So if you have some time left before you have to apply, get your grades up (way up) and show them that you're committed.

Even if you don't receive a scholarship, you can still join ROTC. If you're not on scholarship, you are not obligated to sign any service commitments until your third year. So, if you do well in college, they will give you a scholarship later. If they don't, you can dis-enroll without penalty.

But again, ROTC is not a full ride. It will cover the larger portion of your costs, but not every last penny. If you don't get their scholarship sorted out before you enroll in college, do keep in mind that they may still reject you later (while in college) unless you can prove that your chosen field of study is worth their money and you're able to payoff whatever debts you accumulate with an O1's base pay. ROTC will help quite a bit, but you'll still have to minimize your costs.