1,001 questions about the ASTB (post your scores & ask your questions here!)

[Safashton]

Finished! 67/8/8/8

I came out thinking this was a "good" score. My recruiter basically said it's a fantastic score and should get me Pilot/SWO even with my GPA of 2.95. He also said there's a chance for Intel, which considering how low my GPA is, that's way better than I ever expected. Maybe my recruiter was exaggerating, but he made me feel like this will more than offset my low GPA.

• Important General Advice I haven't seen posted:

Time Strategy: Throughout my studying I was worried over the time limit and with the new test it isn't an issue at all. I think previous test versions used time to grade high scores (Person A managed to answer 28 right questions, Person B only got to 27), but this version doesn't need to. If you're killing the test they can ask harder and harder questions until you miss one. Alternatively, if you're failing on geometry they can spend more time and ask you algebra questions to see what you are good at. If your studying indicates you'll only miss a few questions on a section, take your time. I had 15 or less math questions, so each incorrect answer had a pretty big impact. My proctor and my own test seemed to indicate if you're missing questions, you'll have to answer more questions. With a 2hr+ test, fatigue is an issue, so lowering the amount of questions will be beneficial (especially for the flight sim portion later on). My proctor said for the math portion I had 53 seconds per question if every question was asked. Obviously not every question was asked, but it's a good baseline. If a question will take you 5 minutes to solve, you need to cut your losses.

YOU GET UNLIMITED UAV PRACTICE: This needs repeating. There's no excuse if you mess up on the UAV portion. The practice session allows unlimited practices and asks the exact same questions you'll get on the real deal. I practiced until I got 100% and every time was under 2 seconds. The practice asks random questions so your brain won't fuck up and go off memory. I also wouldn't use the hand drawn compass others have mentioned on this forum. I tried it once during practice and got a significantly slower time than without. It's hard to explain exactly how I approached this section, but these flashcards have the exact format on them for practice (and they're free!). So you should be able to practice until you can consistently recognize the right answer in 1s giving yourself another second to go through the act of clicking and reorienting to the next uav diagram.

• Section Thoughts:

Math: I kind of went into detail on this during my time strategy. Essentially I don't think you'll get asked hard questions unless you're doing well. I've seen people post that they didn't get a log question. I did and it felt harder than the majority of my questions. I won't post specific questions (seriously the Navy is super protective of this test) but some of the questions floating around this forum are the exact same as ones I was asked. They're also usually the harder questions. One question I saw on this forum I didn't understand how to do, looked it up on yahoo.answers and the very same question was on my test. Definitely one of the harder ones I was asked so well worth the time to look it up. The two study guides I'll link below had almost every question type.

Reading: You know it or you don't. I usually felt like every question had 2 viable answers so I can't say with any certainty how well I did here. Just take your time and reread the passage to make sure your final answer fits.

Mechanics: Again, there's a few of these questions floating around the forum, spend some time going through threads from 2013 onwards (new test version). I was disappointed with how I did here (my major is Mechanical Engineering). I think I did best on math, but it probably should have been this stuff Lots of pulley questions for me, nothing unexpected.

Flight/Nautical Information: The study guides I'll link had most of this stuff and I have no prior experience aside from Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 2 back in 2000. So at most I lost 1 point on each stanine portion due to this section with minimal study. Read the study guides, look up stuff on wikipedia, shouldn't be hard.

UAV: Went in depth on this up top.

Flight Sim: Fuck dude. Everyone says they did terribly, and it's true. I'd love to see what someone with 5/5/5 did because mine felt horrible. This section is very similar to the airforce version explained here (airforce has horizontal instead of vertical). Biggest advice is to write stuff down and take your time with directions. Especially for the emergency systems I had the exact responses written down. The screen would flash ENGINE, I'd look down at what my response was supposed to be, execute it then focus on the targeting again. This was good enough for 8/8/8 so there's no real need to memorize responses. The hardest part is your hands will sometimes move in opposite directs to have the same action on the screen. To get the cursors to move up, your right hand will move backwards and your left hand forwards. When I was focusing on just targeting I'd mess this up constantly and move my hands in unison. It felt like I did better at it when I was focusing on listening to the earpiece because then my hands were just on autopilot and did fine on their own.

• Guides:

Study Guide 1 (nelnet also has practice test available with a quick google)
More useful flashcards
Study Guide 2 was a .epub file of "Military Aviation Tests for Dummies" (something like that) that you can find floating around online.

*Oh! Some of the practice tests you can find online (hell even study guides posted by users here) have wrong answers in them for the Math and Mechanical portions. If you think an answer might be wrong, it very well could be.

Good luck! But don't do too good until my boards have convened

I also noticed the significant amount of errors in the study guides posted here. So I mostly ended up to using the guides to show me what types of questions to expect and then went to more official sources.

 

[Jacqui]

Hi everyone,

As previously mentioned many times, thanks for all the awesome information. Very helpful to have it all located on one site! I am retaking the ASTB for the second time May 22. My first time did not go so well, but I did not study much, so I'm hoping for a much better outcome this time thanks to all the information I've found on here!

I do have a question about how the test works. I know it is adaptive and for my math section on my first test, it cut me out with 6 minutes left. When this happens, is it safe to assume, you did well in that section and you don't need to be tested anymore? Or could it also be the opposite, that you did not do well in the section, but they figured that out quickly? Math is not my strongest subject, so I was surprised when the test cut out. I'm basically trying to figure out what sections lowered my score the most. I know I need to improve on the UAV portion and the aviation and nautical information, but I saw a break down on here that said the AQR score is mostly math, the FOFAR is also mostly math and the PFAR score is the aviation and nautical info and the UAV. Is this correct? I assumed I did well on the math since my test cut out early, but if this breakdown is correct, I'm thinking math negatively impacted my score. Any and all insight would be appreciated!

 

[000669219]

I took the ASTB-E a few weeks ago. I didn't do as well as I wanted, and I know I could do better if I were to retake it. However, my recruiter was pleased with my scores, so I guess everything is okay.

Math: A lot of fractional exponents and a few rate, quadratic, and arc length/area questions. I spent a lot of time reviewing these, and went it went well at the beginning. I recommend practicing with the pdfs attached because they did help me. However, if I were to take it again, I would spend more time focusing on probability and averages. I know the basics behind these, so I didn't feel the need to practice, but I was wrong. I couldn't get past the long word problems asking what the person A needs to score on the next test to have an average 10 points higher than person B. Not overly difficult stuff, just hard for the time crunch.

Reading: I struggled with this the most, which is sad because I did the best in this section while taking the practice exams. It is what everyone says: complicated, boring, naval protocols. Unless you are like me and doing poorly because you keep bouncing from that back down to simple passages about random non-military stuff.

Mechanics: Easiest section by far. If you have taken a classical physics class, you should do fine. Know basic phenomena and why/how it works. Isothermal means temperature remains constant. Bernoulli's principle....decrease area: decrease pressure and increase velocity. Mechanical advantages of simple machines and lever classes. Work is conserved. Everything you find ITT will help.

Flight/Nautical Information: I spent the most time studying for this, and unfortunately hardly got anything I recognized. There were so many acronyms that I have never seen before. The only question that I answered with 100% complete confidence was what does Vne on an airspeed indicator represent? (I remember because I called Vne "Vnever" while studying. Do not exceed airspeed under any circumstance). Study all you can for this and study some more. Look through every page in this thread and gain every bit of information you can cram into your head for this. You never know what little factoid will come up.

Personality Test: I am at a loss for words. It sucks and is painfully long. I had a few good laughs though as some of the choices like: I sometimes run stop signs when no one is around or I don't value the opinions of others.

UAV: I fucked up on this one. Yes I used the compass trick, but I relied on it too much. Practice without the compass to train yourself not needing it, then during the test use it as an aid, not something you absolutely rely on.

Flight Simulator: Read the directions carefully and Treat all practice portions as if it is the real test. The screen will be black during the listening portion. Be sure to be pressing the correct buttons. I was not and this hurt my score for the first half. Chasing the object in 1 dimension with the throttle was easy. Chasing the object in 2 dimensions with the joystick was hard. If you want to practice this but do not have access to a flight simulator joystick, I recommend playing any Call of Duty game on inverted with the Y-axis look intensity at 10+. For emergency procures, write them down! you will NOT get to practice them.

Other than this, make sue to read through this entire thread and keep studying until you actually take the exam. Be sure to look at the gouges posted on pages 226-228. Those are super helpful. Try to get a full nights sleep. Since I live far from the testing site, I had to stay with a friend. I slept on their couch and woke up every 45 mins. Being tired probably hurt me the most. Good luck!

 

[Carina]

So has anyone ever taken ASTB and actually scored less? I am retaking next week and I am having cold feet. I scored 48 4/4/5 and I am so afraid of scoring less even though I feel like I know a little more now than I did before. I am just terrified.

 

[LZ71]

Took the exam on Monday. 68/9/9/9

For reference, I used the ASTB-E Secrets Study Guide, flashcards on proprofs, and an AFOQT study guide book whose name I can't remember right now. A few tips that I found helpful for each section:

Math: Wide variety of information needed here including being able to solve a system of equations, an understanding of graphs of typical functions, and geometric formulas. As a disclaimer I studied aerospace engineering in school so math was the section I studied for the least, but the most difficult parts were definitely the longer word problems. You have a lot of time in this section so try to slow things down and work these problems carefully. I'd also recommend studying probabilities. They came up in several problems and can be either easy, straightforward points or impossible time sinks if you don't understand them well. The best advice I can give is to just do as many problems as you can get your hands on. Math is all about repetition and beating the concepts into your head so that no matter what kind of question they throw at you, you can be prepared. Take time every day to do some practice problems, maybe even make some of your own.

Reading: I've gone through some of the tips other people in this thread have given and there's really not much more to say. The passages are mostly boring technical/handbook kind of stuff, and the hardest part is just not getting lost/distracted through the dense sentences. I went in pretty confident to this section and left feeling unsure of how I did, so I would say don't worry too much if you don't feel like you're nailing every question. Just do your best and eliminate as many wrong answers as you can before going with your best guess. Seriously, getting rid of the answers you know are definitely not right is going to be a huge advantage in this section.

Mechanics: Heavily concept oriented, but some math involved that mostly dealt with balancing moments. Easier than other sections because there's only 3 answers. It's a pretty broad selection of questions ranging from simple machines (especially pulley systems), circuits, and hydrostatics. Best advice is to again just churn through as many questions as possible and focus specifically on why each answer is correct, and what concept/principle allows you to come to that conclusion.

Aviation/Nautical Information: Straight up memorization here, concepts mean nothing. It's going to be impossible to cover everything they might ask, but all you can do is absorb as much information as you possibly can beforehand. Like math, I'd recommend taking time each day several weeks before the exam for this. I had a lot of history/aircraft history questions (which I knew very little about), and a lot of questions about aviation nomenclature, so it'd be a good idea to get those down pat. I felt the most nervous about this section going in and didn't come out of it feeling great so again I wouldn't worry too much if you don't feel like you nailed it.

Personality Test: "Which of these terrible characteristics better fits you?" Brutal for the self-esteem

UAV: YOU HAVE UNLIMITED PRACTICE QUESTIONS THAT CHANGE EVERY TIME. DO AS MANY AS POSSIBLE, TO THE POINT WHERE YOU GET THE RIGHT ANSWER VERY QUICKLY. Seriously, this will be the only portion where you can take unlimited practice questions so make them count. Reading through this thread it seems like people made a compass on paper to help, I didn't do that and did really well on this section but to each their own. I basically just looked at the heading, figured how I'd rotate to be in the closest cardinal direction, and went from there. It became second nature after a few problems and I breezed through the rest. But again, do as many practice questions as you need.

Flight Sim: It's not fun. You're gonna feel like you did garbage the entire time, I know I did. Using the flight stick at first seemed counter-intuitive like someone else said and I had to force my brain to not invert the horizontal axis. For the record, I didn't have any flight sim experience prior to the test. Really, just relax, focus, and try not to get into your head too much. I went off of advice I saw in this thread and tried to prioritize two of the tasks (for me, it was the listening and flight stick) which seemed to work out alright for me. If you need to, write down the emergency procedures but I didn't really find it a necessity. The most annoying part I found was that the throttle seemed to stick somewhat. Otherwise, just do your best and know that you're gonna do better than you think you did.

 

[Safashton]

Took the exam on Monday. 68/9/9/9

For reference, I used the ASTB-E Secrets Study Guide, flashcards on proprofs, and an AFOQT study guide book whose name I can't remember right now. A few tips that I found helpful for each section:

Math: Wide variety of information needed here including being able to solve a system of equations, an understanding of graphs of typical functions, and geometric formulas. As a disclaimer I studied aerospace engineering in school so math was the section I studied for the least, but the most difficult parts were definitely the longer word problems. You have a lot of time in this section so try to slow things down and work these problems carefully. I'd also recommend studying probabilities. They came up in several problems and can be either easy, straightforward points or impossible time sinks if you don't understand them well. The best advice I can give is to just do as many problems as you can get your hands on. Math is all about repetition and beating the concepts into your head so that no matter what kind of question they throw at you, you can be prepared. Take time every day to do some practice problems, maybe even make some of your own.

Reading: I've gone through some of the tips other people in this thread have given and there's really not much more to say. The passages are mostly boring technical/handbook kind of stuff, and the hardest part is just not getting lost/distracted through the dense sentences. I went in pretty confident to this section and left feeling unsure of how I did, so I would say don't worry too much if you don't feel like you're nailing every question. Just do your best and eliminate as many wrong answers as you can before going with your best guess. Seriously, getting rid of the answers you know are definitely not right is going to be a huge advantage in this section.

Mechanics: Heavily concept oriented, but some math involved that mostly dealt with balancing moments. Easier than other sections because there's only 3 answers. It's a pretty broad selection of questions ranging from simple machines (especially pulley systems), circuits, and hydrostatics. Best advice is to again just churn through as many questions as possible and focus specifically on why each answer is correct, and what concept/principle allows you to come to that conclusion.

Aviation/Nautical Information: Straight up memorization here, concepts mean nothing. It's going to be impossible to cover everything they might ask, but all you can do is absorb as much information as you possibly can beforehand. Like math, I'd recommend taking time each day several weeks before the exam for this. I had a lot of history/aircraft history questions (which I knew very little about), and a lot of questions about aviation nomenclature, so it'd be a good idea to get those down pat. I felt the most nervous about this section going in and didn't come out of it feeling great so again I wouldn't worry too much if you don't feel like you nailed it.

Personality Test: "Which of these terrible characteristics better fits you?" Brutal for the self-esteem

UAV: YOU HAVE UNLIMITED PRACTICE QUESTIONS THAT CHANGE EVERY TIME. DO AS MANY AS POSSIBLE, TO THE POINT WHERE YOU GET THE RIGHT ANSWER VERY QUICKLY. Seriously, this will be the only portion where you can take unlimited practice questions so make them count. Reading through this thread it seems like people made a compass on paper to help, I didn't do that and did really well on this section but to each their own. I basically just looked at the heading, figured how I'd rotate to be in the closest cardinal direction, and went from there. It became second nature after a few problems and I breezed through the rest. But again, do as many practice questions as you need.

Flight Sim: It's not fun. You're gonna feel like you did garbage the entire time, I know I did. Using the flight stick at first seemed counter-intuitive like someone else said and I had to force my brain to not invert the horizontal axis. For the record, I didn't have any flight sim experience prior to the test. Really, just relax, focus, and try not to get into your head too much. I went off of advice I saw in this thread and tried to prioritize two of the tasks (for me, it was the listening and flight stick) which seemed to work out alright for me. If you need to, write down the emergency procedures but I didn't really find it a necessity. The most annoying part I found was that the throttle seemed to stick somewhat. Otherwise, just do your best and know that you're gonna do better than you think you did.

Very impressive score! You going to be submitted for the July Board?

 

[LZ71]

Very impressive score! You going to be submitted for the July Board?

Thanks! I have no idea really, I haven't talked to my recruiter much about it yet since the priority was to get in for the ASTB. I had Lasik surgery a few months ago and I'm not eligible for the medical screening for 6 months after the surgery date, so I'd assume I'd be submitted to a board after then.

 

[Leo brown]

I retested on the OAR, scored a 49
AQR: 4
PFAR: 6
FOFAR: 5
Cummulative GPA: 3.049
Major: B.S. Mathematics
First choice is NFO, then Pilot. I would like to know what some of you think my chances are.

 

[FormerRecruitingGuru]

I retested on the OAR, scored a 49
AQR: 4
PFAR: 6
FOFAR: 5
Cummulative GPA: 3.049
Major: B.S. Mathematics
First choice is NFO, then Pilot. I would like to know what some of you think my chances are.

1. Search the forums.
2. Ask your OR.

There's already a separate board on AWs dedicated to what stats are considered competitive.

 

[ichneumonidae]

Just posting here to thank everyone for posting such great gouge. We are very fortunate to have this resource. Taking my OAR/ASTB on June 14th and am tackling the math section hard over the next few weeks!

 

[(NAC)Arizona]

Just posting here to thank everyone for posting such great gouge. We are very fortunate to have this resource. Taking my OAR/ASTB on June 14th and am tackling the math section hard over the next few weeks!

Right there with ya!

 

[ichneumonidae]

Right there with ya!

Been following your posts before I decided to take the plunge and stop lurking. Seems like you have put in the work and so hopefully the board shows through for you. Good luck to you with the upcoming board!

 

[(NAC)Arizona]

Been following your posts before I decided to take the plunge and stop lurking. Seems like you have put in the work and so hopefully the board shows through for you. Good luck to you with the upcoming board!

Thanks! Hopefully through hard studying we prevail on the ASTB. Regardless, never give up. Good luck to you on the test and the Supply board around the corner!

 

[Jennbear16]

Took the ASTB last week and just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has posted here. For anyone taking the ASTB in the future, this is a great resource for assistance with studying.

 

[Carina]

So does anyone know what the pilot/NFO acceptance rate have been for 2017?