Don't know if anyone is still reading this but I thought I would put this out there for what its worth.
I am a junior in college, with aspirations to work as an airline pilot someday and have chose to go about it in a less traditional way. I recently acquired my PPL through a local part 61 school at roughly 45 hours and $6700 cost including checkride and study materials. I plan to pursue the rest of my ratings this way, and hope to get a sport cfi at around 150 hours. This will allow me to build time towards cpl and cfi while not paying for any more time than I have to.
I chose to do things this way for several reasons. First is that after doing as much research as I could, I realize and accept that the aviation industry is very cyclical in nature and that even though we are in a very good time for pilots, it has not and will not always be this way. To this end I chose this route as the best way for me to mitigate the risks I see from an aviation career. One way I am mitigating risk is to pay for ratings as I go, and accrue as little debt as possible. I also chose to major in engineering and have a possible career that does not involve aviation were I to loose a medical or get furloughed. A side benefit is that I have had several paid internships that have helped fund my flight training as well. I used community college for the first two years and have worked through some semesters as well as over the summers. My goal is to graduate without any debt and roughly 100-120 hours of flight time towards the sport cfi.
These are the main things I am doing to try and mitigate the risks of what has always been a career goal for me. My advice is to do your private part 61 and see how you like flying, and find a degree that would give you a career that you could live with not in aviation if the airlines don't work out. Some would argue that with aviation being seniority based this approach is shooting yourself in the foot for getting to a major, but after reading books like Skygods, Glory lost and found and others, it would seem that there aren't many certain things in aviation. Hopefully this doesn't come across as bragging or arrogant, this is just my 2 cents.