I would like to thank the earlier participants of this forum, as it was extremely helpful in my preparation for the ASTB. I am a recent college graduate with no aviation or military background and played a decent amount of video games when I was younger but would not consider myself a “gamer” in any sense. I took the test relatively recently and scored 69/9/8/9. While I did not initially plan on posting and most of what I have to say has more or less been stated in earlier posts, I feel obliged to detail my process and advice here considering how helpful this forum was to me.
Overall: I would say I began studying in earnest roughly 2-3 weeks before my exam. The number of hours per day varied considerably, however in the last week I studied rigorously and took a few days off of work to fully commit myself. While I tried to adequately prepare for every subtest, the ones that took up most of my study time were the Math, Mechanical, and ANIT portions. While how much studying is necessary/best varies by the individual, if you have made the decision that becoming a naval aviator is your truly your goal, I would advise erring on the side of “over-preparing”. My thought process was that I would rather look back and realize I studied more than I needed to than not prepare enough to get the necessary scores to be selected. I will also say that I was pleasantly surprised by how long each subtest took, I never felt like I was running out of time. Finally, I did not feel like I was doing especially well when I actually took the test, and was pleasantly surprised by my results, so if you feel as though you are not doing well do not be discouraged, keep doing your best, as you may only think you are doing worse than you actually are.
Test Day: All of this information will seem obvious/intuitive, but I think it is worth sharing. I made sure I got an adequate amount of sleep, stayed hydrated, and ate well in the two days before the exam. Around 9-10pm the night before, I stopped studying and made getting my mind into a relaxed, confident state the priority. I left for the exam quite early, to allow for possible traffic jams, car trouble, etc. I went to the bathroom just before the exam, and brought with me scratch paper, pens, water, snacks, tissues, a light jacket, and an analog watch, and made sure I had the proctor’s permission to have each item with me in the exam room. I also used the break period to stretch, walk around, go to the bathroom again, and do whatever was needed to stay in a constructive state of mind. Again, I am aware none of this advice seems especially insightful, but forgetting any one of them could potentially harm your results, so having a mental checklist like so can be helpful.
Study Materials: I will post the usefulness of the materials for each section in greater detail below. I have no prior aviation/flight sim experience, so I got a stick and throttle controller for my Xbox to get used to using such a controller, but honestly I did not use it that much and the controls in the exam are much bigger/heavier/clunky, so I would not consider this a necessity. Kyle’s guide (which I believe includes the Peterson’s materials) posted earlier in this forum is a godsend, probably the most useful of any one resource, and Barron’s prep book is also very useful. I also had Officer Candidate Tests for Dummies, which can also help but is clearly inferior to Barron’s if you only wish to purchase one book. For further information on specific information/concepts, plenty is available via quick, intuitive Youtube/Google searches.
Math: I majored in a social science in college, so even though I have generally been competent in STEM subjects throughout my education, it is certainly not my wheelhouse, so I studied this section rigorously to compensate. As posted by others, many of the preparation materials, such as Barron’s, are far too easy on this section. Kyle’s guide is generally more useful here. Concepts such as probability, exponents, logs, series, matrices, etc. were all areas that I needed to brush up on and were covered lightly if at all in some of the softer study materials. I would advise you to cover all of your bases in regards to both your theoretical understanding and being able to solve practice problems. When I found a subject to be especially tricky, searching for online resources, especially Khan Academy on Youtube, got me to where I believed I needed to be. While I was unsure of some of the problems on the actual test, I am sure that had I not been told that Barron’s, etc. were too soft and not done further preparation I would have gotten a significantly lower score.
Reading: My education background was relatively well-suited to this subtest, so I did not prepare for it as much as some of the others. I received no vocabulary questions, only inference. The material was, in fact, quite dry and Navy-specific, so reading some actual Navy materials that have been made available may be helpful in familiarizing yourself to the types of passages you will see here. I believe it is generally helpful to take the approach of taking the questions very literally (what are they actually saying as opposed to what are they alluding to). Practice tests in sources like Barron’s, etc. was how I did most of my preparation here.
Mechanical: Like the Math section, this subject is not my natural academic home so I studied for it quite a lot. Unlike the Math section, most of the widely-used study materials like Barron’s will prepare you pretty well, however again I would recommend using sources like Kyle’s guide. Cover areas like circuits, simple machines, basic physics/mechanical sciences, etc. Again, I used intuitive Google and Youtube searches if I felt like I needed further explanation on a particular concept. This subtest really is pretty straightforward, and unlike math I do not believe it runs the risk of certain, popular test materials leaving you largely unprepared. Build a strong theoretical understanding, execute the practice problems, and you should be fine.
ANIT: Again, I have no aviation/military background, so there was a lot I had to learn before the test. While there really is a lot of information out there to be potentially tested on, the good news is that this subtest measures “knowledge” not “aptitude”, so improvement here is quite attainable. I did not review the FAA materials, however I used Barron’s, Kyle’s guide, the ASTB Cram flashcards, and Google and Youtube searches if there was an area I felt like I needed additional explanation on. This, more than any other subtest, was where I thought I was getting killed, so if you think as you are doing poorly do not get discouraged, just do your best one question at a time.
NAFTI: This section takes an annoyingly long time, and some of the questions will definitely feel strange/uncomfortable. It is true that this is much less conventional than the earlier subtests and does not require substantial, traditional studying time, and the best piece of advice is to just answer the questions as honestly as possible. However, I actually think a little preparation could help here. Hopefully you have had the opportunity to meet/speak to some naval aviators or military personnel in general, and gotten a sense of how your specific character/personality can constructively fit into that larger community. What I did was just take a little time, certainly less than an hour, to undergo some personal reflection, and imagine that if there were an actual interview portion of this test, how I would want to present myself and what personal qualities I would want to emphasize (while still being truthful of course). Then, I tried to pick the responses that best conveyed those qualities.
UAV: I watched the Youtube video that was been posted several times in this forum, drew a compass rose, and practiced with some flashcards. If you do that, there will be absolutely no surprises on this subtest. I will say that while accuracy is obviously more important than speed, it would be hard for me to imagine that nearly every competitive applicant who adequately prepares does not get nearly every question right. Therefore, I would imagine most of the differentiation between potentially competitive applicants comes from speed, not accuracy. In other words, while accuracy is the most important thing here, speed is likely quite important too.
PBM: There is another Youtube video that has been posted earlier in the forum that does a good job of explaining what to expect in this subtest. I knew going into this one that it was going to feel hard, there were going to be moments where I felt was screwing up, so the most important thing was to stay calm, collected, and not to get discouraged, just keep doing as best as I could. You will also get some time between sections and some practice sections, which are very helpful if you use them to take a deep breath (literally and figuratively). The test will have you undergo a dichotic test of pressing the trigger/clutch when you hear even/odd numbers in the target ear, vertically track an airplane graphic with the throttle, and track a similar graphic across a 2-D field with the flight stick, and then combinations of those three. You will also have to undertake 3 emergency procedures while tracking with the throttle and flight stick. For the dichotic sections, I tilted my head in the direction of the target ear to give myself a mental cue. I also wrote down the emergency procedures on my scratch paper before the section that included them, which you will have plenty of time to do. During the sections that required me to do 2 or 3 of the tests at the same time, my priorities were 1. Dichotic/Emergency Procedures, 2. Flight Stick, 3. Throttle, though I still tried to do as best as I could on all three. The set up is right-handed and bigger/heavier than one might expect, so be mentally prepared for that if you are naturally left-handed and/or have skinny forearms like me. Again, I cannot emphasize enough how important staying calm and not getting discouraged is during this subtest; if I had to give just one piece of advice for the entire ASTB, it would be that.
BI-RV: Some of the materials out there still say this is part of the ASTB, however it was not given to me and I believe it is no longer part of the larger exam.
Sorry if this was excessively long, I wanted to be comprehensive. Again, study hard, get adequate rest, be calm and resilient during the test, and take it one question/section at a time and you will be fine. This forum was a true help to me in my preparation, so I am more than happy to answer questions people might have via a direct message. Best of luck to all who are preparing for this test and undertaking the larger process of becoming a military officer.
