How hard is pilot school?
 

Ok I want to become an airline pilot and I'm planning on starting pilot school soon. Is it possible to go to work, go to university for physics, and go to pilot school all at the same time? I dont want to wait till I get my bachelors degree to start getting my pilots license or vice-versa. I want to get my bachelors and get my pilots license around the same time so I can work as a flight instructor fulltime to get my 1500 hours. (I've already been in college for 2 years) Is this really possible? Or is pilot school "book work" too excruciating? Some details. I go to college full-time for physics only on 2 days out of the week but the classes are hard and my work schedule is not bad I work part-time around 20 hours a week. They are very lenient on scheduling. Has anyone done it? Thank you.

Part time is fine but what gets people is scheduling in between work or meetings. Too tired at the end of the day.
Try and dedicate two days a week to flying and flight training related.
No work or other activities so you can focus 100%.
You also don’t waste a lot of time and money catching up every time.
Make sure you don’t run out of money in the middle of a certificate or rating.
Take what the school quotes you and add 25-30%.
This is not because the school is lying to you but because most of them quote minimum requirements in order to not scare you off.
Minimum for your Private is 40hrs but the national average is more like 65-70hrs.
This because a combination of the very old and the very young and people that start-stop-start-stop their training.

Pilot training is not that hard but you never stop learning. Your whole career. The moment you stop learning you’re gonna break or bend something......or never upgrade...that too.

The hardest part of learning to fly is paying for it.

Of course you can do these things.

Are they challenging? Yep. Are they for everyone? Nope. Some people have families or situations where they can't commit as much time without extreme sacrifices, but others get it done. I know plenty of people who did engineering degrees at the same time as pilot training and the instructing. I did my Master's while flight instructing. I didn't have very many days off and lots of very long days, but I got it done.

It's good to know someone others have done it because it means I can do it too. Ground school will be the main problem. It's one month mon-fri in the middle of the day from 15:00 to 17:30 I believe

Thanks for the advice!

Technically formal ground school is not required under part 61. If you're a physics student, you can read the book and do the workbook (there are several versions commercially available) on your own. I did this, and you won't miss much if the ground school is targeted to the usual lowest common denominator.

Keep in mind that this is different from written test prep, which you can also do on your own using commercially available study guides.

You will get one-on-one ground training before each flight with a CFI, that covers the more practical applications of the academic work.

It honestly depends on your individual aptitude. I am currently in a 141 program, part-time, as I work F/T, and I will say, like anything in life, the more repetitions you get, the better you retain it. When you take lessons 2x a week, you're most likely going to re-hash what you did the previous lesson; aka, costing you more money.

I am running into this work/flying balance problem. Haven't flown for quite a few years and wanted to get back into it. I started flying once a week after work and studying when I wasn't flying. The problem was I wasn't retaining anything in the airplane. I tried flying twice a week, but my work performance started to suffer. Recently there was a management shakeup and my workload buried me so I haven't flown for almost 3 weeks. Flying cannot be a part time/half a$$ thing, you really need to dedicate yourself and your mind to do it. When I was flying 5 days a week at a 141 program I could shoot a back course approach with my eyes closed, now I couldn't navigate to a VOR. It's all about repetition.

Yeah, better to fly 3-4 times were week than twice a week.