I went to ERAU DAB and knowing what I know now I probably would not have done it. All I had was a the same dream that most on here do...to be a pilot. However I didn't have what a lot of people did...knowing someone in the industry. I didn't have any relatives, friends, friends of friends or anything like that, that I could talk to about it, plus I had never heard of websites like these. I believed the Riddle guy when he said that basically the only way to do this for a living was to go to Riddle or go to the military and I had been shot at before so I knew it sucked enough that I didn't want it as part of my job description so I went to Riddle. I was lucky enough that I went down there with my Instrument Rating and managed to only have to do my Commercial Multi on campus (they screwed me hard on that..story to follow) Anyways my backup plan was to go to a school such as GA Tech and get a degree there.
I have been flying for about 12 years and with the airlines for 7 years. I have meet a ton of people over the years and they have come from all kinds of backgrounds. I've never done anything with the following schools, but have heard good words from people who went there. MTSU seems to get super high scores from everyone I know that went there. Guys that went to Purdue seem happy. The UND guys seem happy, but glad to be out of the cold. If I had to choose from one of these I'd seriously look at MTSU in Murfreesboro TN....I have two reasons for that #1. The guys I know that went there are all around good guys, fly well, and know their stuff. #2. I just moved to Murfreesboro last year. It is super cheap to live there...but even better than that it is flooded with hot chicks....its almost rediculous...unlucky for me I have a wife and kid so I just get to look. Its only 20-30 mins from Nashville and Nashville is a fun town and has even more hot chicks. One draw back is if you don't like country music you will eventually be converted since Nashville is home of country music and 90% of the radio stations are country.
Now to the pros and cons of Riddle,
Pros
Its in Daytona Beach...I had fun in that town
The ground portion or university style classes were super thorough and were usually taught by retired pilots, mechanics, etc.
Since they teach more than flying you meet friends that end up in all aspects of the industry. I have buddies that are in the airlines, fly stuff for the military, ATCers, design stuff for the military, work for NASA, work for Boeing trying to get the 787 in the air, etc. Not really anything too important per say, but get to hear some good or intersesting stories that I had never dreamed about hearing when I was growing up.
Thats about it for the pros.
Cons
Its super pricey
The flight school side is a rip off...to the point where if it were a true FBO it would tank because no one would put up with the BS they throw around.
My horror story. I was on lesson 7 or so of my Commericial Multi. I was going by the syllabus that was handed to my by my CFI on day 1. I made a comment about being half way done. My CFI sounded surprised and wondered how I came up with that. I was like well the checkride is lesson 14 and we just did lesson 7 so thats half way. He was like oh you have the wrong syllabus we just changed last week. Now there are 24 lessons. I went to the cheif instructor saying that I should be able to go by the syllabus handed to me on day 1 and I got laughed at. He didn't care that I didn't have the money for the extra 10 lessons. I was already a CFI/CFII by that point and was working at another school in DAB. I knew that was no way to treat students.
You can't change instructors without an act of god. You don't like your CFI, don't get along with him, don't do well with his teaching style...too bad for you
You always get the "Riddle run around" whenever you try to seek answers to your questions.
The whole PQ or PT or whatever they call that system takes almost all of the go/no go decision power away from you and your CFI. This results in people becoming what I like to call "Riddle Robots" they have a tough time making gon no go decisions and also have a hard time dealing with outside the box type situations.
When I was there in 2002ish the guy/girl ratio was just about 10 to 1. Rule out the ugly ones, the ones that like girls, the ones that don't already have boyfriends then the ratio goes up to 15-20 to 1. Its so bad that you will hear the term "Riddle hot"
Sometimes you get too much aviation....and its hard to find a break from it at Riddle.
Some people let Riddle make thier head and ego too big and talk too much trash once out in the real world. Guys like this typically suck at flying and just like to talk trash. While I've flown with other guys from other schools that suck at flying none of them ever do the same trash talking ego boost thing that some Riddle guys do....it really give Riddle guys a bad name.
Oh yeah one last con....Riddle never directly got me a job. I did all of that on my own.
I'd say thats about it for the cons.
I hope that shed some light on the subject for you.