Is it worth it to go to school for ATC?

C

Coloradoproud

Well-Known Member
Hello everyone I'm new here and I need your advice. A little about myself: I'm 24 years old looking to go back to school after spending two years in the oilfields. Prior to that I spent two years working for the airlines on the ramp and customer service.

I have read horror stories about the FAA declining jobs to qualified students and veterans, instead opting to hire off the streets. That being said do you think it's in my best interest to get a degree in ATC? Does anyone know if the FAA is planning to change these hiring practices? Any clarification and advice would be appreciated. Thank you.
 
For the time being, I can't advise going to a CTI school. The program is very poorly regulated and there are too many schools offering CTI degrees that don't provide any actual training that would help you at the FAA Academy.

I graduated one of the good CTI school's right as the Sequester/Hiring Freeze hit and my degree was worthless. Ended up working the ramp for Southwest for a bit and I got very lucky and was picked up on the 2014 Off the Street Bid and made it through. My class of 18 people was made up of 6 CTI kids, and 12 Off the Street. Only 7 of us graduated and it was 4 CTI and 3 OTS who passed. But I haven't heard anything about them going back to CTI only hiring panels. IMO there is no real difference between CTI and OTS students at the academy. It all comes down to your study habits and ability to not get freaked out when your job is on the line.

My best advice would be to get a degree in anything else, find something else to do, and apply for the Off the Street bids as they come out and hope you get your name pulled out of the needle in a haystack process that they currently use. There was a bid in March that just closed, and rumor is the next one won't be for 18-24 months. But, anything could happen and from my experience, anybody that claims to know exactly what the plan is doesn't really know what they're talking about when it comes to FAA hiring.

There are a few other members here that have been working in the field for much longer than me and are more knowledgable, and they might be able to give some insight also.

Good luck!
 
I was an '08 CTI hire and up until the last year or two I was pretty big on the CTI route for people your age. I flat out don't know if there will be another CTI hiring bid coming out. I imagine it will happen again, but it may not happen for 3 or 4 years at which point you'll be on the cusp of aging out and in the best case may be able to apply for 3 or 4 bids in which you'll compete for 1,000 jobs at a time against 20,000. That's my optimistic numbers as they haven't done two bids a year for some time now. Worst case is you may get in on one or two hiring bids opened up to anyone. Also not in your favor is the military route requires typically a 5 or 6 year enlistment depending on branch and the guard/reserves are cracking down hard on non prior service.

I don't know where you are with your education, but my generic advice to a would be controller in their mid 20's with no college has always been, be adventurous, seek out an AS at a CTI school. Transfer credits after you graduate and get a bachelors. Treat the CTI thing as both a lotto ticket and a cheap way to earn credits. Now if you're a year short of a 4 year degree that plan doesn't make sense.
 
After four years and $70K, graduating with honors from UND (supposedly one of the top programs) my son just got his "Thanks, but no thanks....you're not qualified" letter from the FAA. So I'm thinking there may be better options career-wise.
 
Your best bet if you want to do atc is go military. While you will be cutting it close if you only do one enlistment (navy 5 years/af 6 years, dont know other branches), there are also people who have up to 2 years AD time left that received TOL's from the experienced bid the FAA put out in Jan. So there is a chance you could be hired before your enlistment is up, but if nothing else, you could do 20 or get out and do contract/dod.
 
No. Please don't. If being a USAF controller still lumps you in with the general public forcing you to take the BQ, no way they care about the CTI anymore...
 
Knee jerk answer is no, however, I've heard it's almost required for enroute option. The wash-out rate for off the street (enroute) hires at Academy is through the roof. Aside from that, save your money.
 
Jetfreq said:
Knee jerk answer is no, however, I've heard it's almost required for enroute option. The wash-out rate for off the street (enroute) hires at Academy is through the roof. Aside from that, save your money.
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There's almost no difference in washout rates between CTI and OTS in the Enroute class. You definitely don't need CTI experience to make it through, you just need to be able to study and perform under pressure on the graded evals where you either pass or get fired. I was CTI and my school was actually good and we had done Non Radar problems using the same airspace, but other than that there wasn't much of an advantage.
 
nabbyfan said:
There's almost no difference in washout rates between CTI and OTS in the Enroute class. You definitely don't need CTI experience to make it through, you just need to be able to study and perform under pressure on the graded evals where you either pass or get fired. I was CTI and my school was actually good and we had done Non Radar problems using the same airspace, but other than that there wasn't much of an advantage.
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Well, but you were CTI, right? From what I keep hearing, the off the street hires have significantly less time to learn the maps. My brother who's a controller and training specialist at ZAU said the washout rate is primarily due to that (by what they've been told)
 
Everybody has the same time to learn the maps. I had used them in school 3 years before the academy but started from scratch there. You get them the first day of Enroute class and take the Map test for 2% of your final grade 2 weeks later. Nobody that actually tried got less than a 95%.

The hardest thing about the academy is the stress. The actual problems you run on the final graded evals are not difficult. Its the fact that your career is on the line that some people couldn't handle and they got nervous and did stupid mistakes they had never done before. But if you study hard and enter the final evals knowing that you know your stuff, you should be fine.
 
Why would the Enroute option be so much more difficult than terminal in that respect?

Interested because I've been picked up by ZID and I have a bit of anxiety having always been approach....well, and tower but no one likes the tower.
 
Jetfreq said:
Why would the Enroute option be so much more difficult than terminal in that respect?

Interested because I've been picked up by ZID and I have a bit of anxiety having always been approach....well, and tower but no one likes the tower.
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Seeing as you joined yesterday I'm guessing nabbyfan assumed you were a new hire. Best of luck in Indy. There are some ARTCC turned TRACON and vice versa types running around here who may have some good input.
 
CTI, hahahahahahahaha the biggest joke the FFA ever put on unsuspecting young folks that thought that they could buy their way into ATC. The wash out rate for VRA, CTI and OTS were pretty much the same, maybe the VRAs had a litter better chance but not by much. You can either learn and do this job or you cant dose not matter what list you came from. Funny back in the day we were with a few exceptions all OTSs and had to deal with the OKC meat grinder.
 
One thing to remember about enroute okc vs terminal okc is that for enroute...you are not in control of the scenario.

D side lab scenarios are not easy to judge, compared to the r side. In order to better judge your ability they use every rule in the book, and if you don't know how to use all the rules then you don't pass.

Vs the r side, 5 miles and 1000 ft, then your good.

There are so many gotya's that training has created for D side training...its basically made D side scenarios something you play then you learn what a real D side does.

I will say this, I was a D side for about 7 months. I learned more about being a D side in one 45 minute stage 4 scenario than I did in the 7 months of working as a D side.
 
queeno said:
had to deal with the OKC meat grinder
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April 1987 497 of us OTS's listened to the incoming speech by the head of the Academy, August 1987 136 of us were left.

Today's OKC "experience" is a joke. You can either do it, or you can't and IMHO we should go back to the old screen. Those that made it through there had a MUCH higher success rate in the field.
 
ChasenSFO said:
No. Please don't. If being a USAF controller still lumps you in with the general public forcing you to take the BQ, no way they care about the CTI anymore...
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Since when does a USAF controller get lumped in with OTS? Unless you were talking about prior to the experienced bid?
 
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