Originally Posted by TankerDriver

When I was looking into OTS, the recruiter I worked with told me that if I didn't have at least 300 hours of flight time, to not even bother. Granted, recruiters will say anything to steer people the way they want them, but OTS flight slots are very competitive. OTS gets about 100 flight slots per year, which is not very many compared to the other commissioning sources and a lot of them go to prior service candidates as well. Out of around 275 trainees in my OTS class, there were not even 20 UPT candidates and I would say at least half of them had at least PPL, IFR, and Commercial ratings. There were even a few furloughed regional pilots with thousands of hours who were going to the reserve units. I had everything up through a CFII and a bit over 1,200 hours. There were also a few who had no PPL at all. They must have had super high GPA's, AFOQT scores, PCSM scores, etc... My AFOQT scores were "OK" (84 pilot/78 Nav), but my PCSM was a 98. I had a 3.2 GPA.

A lot of your success in UPT is based upon your attitude. You could have 10,000 hours and be a royal jerk off and get washed out, so keep that in mind. Do I think having just a PPL will help you? I don't think it'll hurt you, but I'm not sure it's going to do wonders for your success either (compared to anyone else). From what I've seen, it's the guys with multiple ratings and 500+ hours who pull ahead, as long as they don't have an attitude problem. That said, I wouldn't go out and spend $10,000 on PPL and instrument rating just to gain some sort of advantage in UPT. I had plans to fly commercially before coming into the Air Force, so spending for the ratings was a must.