I voted for Beaver but I didn't go there. I only say that because in my OKC class, the one kid from Beaver was the only kid who had any idea what was actually going on in the beginning (The rest came from Minneapolis, ERAU, Vaughn, & MTSU). With that being said, I think CTI is a waste of money. I went to Vaughn which I will be the first to admit is ridiculously stupid and even more of a waste of money than other CTI schools. Regardless, OKC will teach you from the ground up which is just another reason why I think CTI is a waste of money.
OKC wasn't a joke -- at least not for en route. A class finished every single week. You eat lunch on the main level near the stairs. The basement is where the labs are. I remember seeing people come up those stairs crying every single week and we all knew what had happened -- they just washed out. It was a humbling experience and a weekly reminder that this job isn't for everyone. It was also a reminder that you're not there to party. That doesn't mean don't have a good time but it means to never forget what your priority is: leaving OKC
with a job. It's a long drive home. I can only imagine how much longer it would be if you had to spend the whole drive thinking about what could have been.
I was there in the summer of 2011 and at the time, en route classes consisted of 12 people. There were generally 2-3 people that washed out of every class. In my class, we had 10. 1 washed out. I thought 3 people in my class were going to potentially wash out and the guy who actually did wash out wasn't one of them. I didn't remote many problems for him but from what I understand (& what I remembered from the few I did), he was fairly average maybe even slightly above average. Either way, he lost his nerves when PV's came. He just bombed all three of them. The other 3 made it, albeit barely. For the 9 of us that made it, I CPC'd this past summer and another two should be finishing early next year. I am not aware of anyone who is struggling but rather has just had (or still having) longer waits for classes. I was ridiculously lucky when it came to waiting for a D class and a R class which is why I certified so much faster than the rest of my OKC class. We went to Memphis, New York, Atlanta, and LA.
The academy, depending on what facility type you're hired to is a completely different animal. I was TRACON as an EnRoute guy from Beaver. New sets of rules, they basically expected everyone to know approach rules and I didn't know them all because the 5 seconds they spent glancing over them went over my head at the time (divergence?). Doesn't hurt that the basics and habits I picked up at Beaver helped me though real world training and my time in OKC. Also, it was somewhat helpful that it is impossible to fail the TRACON PV. Not that I would have.
Even though you can fail en route as opposed to RTF, like Genot said, the academy is still fantasy land and nothing they do there is realistic. You'll learn how to really work traffic when you start OJT.