When a plane goes "dead stick" (the engine stops running), choosing when to land is no longer optional, you ARE going to land and SOON! Now with that said and accepted as a fact you must also accept that gaining altitude is no longer possible, so if the plane is anywhere close to properly trimmed NO UP elevator should be imputed. If you were to apply up elevator with no thrust (engine not running) that slows the airspeed of the plane and when you loose enough airspeed the the wing no longer generates enough lift to overcome gravity's pull and down goes the plane. Now with the plane no longer going fast enough to keep it flying, you also loose roll, pitch and yaw control because there isn't enough air going over the control surfaces for them to be effective. Now correct action when a dead stick occurs would be to immediately slightly drop the nose, allowing the now un-powered aircraft to maintain sufficient air speed to continue to generate adequate lift and airflow over the control surfaces for directing the airplane back the the runway by the shortest route possible. It is now a "judgement call" based on your experience with the aircraft being flown whether you have enough altitude given the gliding ability of the plane to be able to set up for a "normal" into the wind landing approach, a down wind landing approach, or land it crossways on the runway. What you can not do is apply up elevator to to try to keep the plane in the air longer to make it to the runway. If you do (and you fellow flyers say you did) that's when you bleed off enough air speed that lift and control are lost and the plane crashes. If you don't have enough altitude to glide the plane back to the runway you must quickly pick the spot to touch down that will do the least damage to the plane that the plane will be able to glide to. Normally with a trainer type aircraft they glide quite well (and far) so if you have any altitude to work with coming back to the runway with a dead stick is very doable. If you loose an engine on takeoff (worst case senairo) and have little or no altitude you must slightly drop the nose and pick a spot straight ahead of the plane to put it back down. If there is runway left ahead, use it, if not pick the best place that will do the least damage. It's not likely you can turn around and come back to the runway but that is again a judgement call based on what you know the plane can do. What you should do is to practice dead sticks by at various places in your flying pattern at your field, "give yourself" a dead stick by shutting you engine back to idle and seeing how far you can get back into landing position with the engine just at idle, land it that way if you can, and if you can't make back to the runway power up and go around. Don't shut your engine off, just back to an idle to do this exercise. Do this over and over and you will be ready to do the right thing when a real dead stick does occur. When I was learning to fly, my instructor would reach over to my TX and shut the engine back to an idle (when I wasn't expecting it) and say " OK, big boy what are you going to do now, and don't touch the throttle"! It was a good learning exercise. I would drop the nose a little and fly it on in and now dead sticks are mostly a "non issue" when they happen. I hope this simple explanation helps you and please do the practice dead sticks on yourself, it will become a fun challenge while you're flying.