As a direct entry captain, you start right away with the captain's pay rate during training. The current sign-on bonus is 50K.
You will do CBT's, Groundschool then your ORAL which you have to pass before you go to the Simulator training.
Once you pass your type ride, you get signed off for IOE. I believe its currently 50 hours for direct entry captains, not sure what it is for the near entry guys as they start out as FO.

Verify with recruiting the pay rates as I am not sure if the near entry guys get paid FO or CA pay.

As previously said, be aware that you are looking at about 3 years plus of reserve time, make sure the sign-on bonus is worth it, they don't pay that out of kindness.

New York and Chicago will be your only option for a while, DFW and MIA will be out of reach for quite some time.

Hope this helps.