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

H

hyperion

New Member
So I've been in the Marine Reserves on the enlisted side for the past 7 years, finished my undergrad in Business Admin (3.19) and had to do MEPS again Yesterday and then took the ASTB right afterwards. My scores were 5/5/6. damn.:( (I found out that I was going to be going to MEPS and taking the test like two days before I went up so needless to say that I didn't prepare enough). I bought the Barron's study guide for Military Flight Aptitude Tests. I studies all I could after work at the crappy hotel they put me in and while waiting to have the doc call me up to turn my head and cough.

From everything that I've read they say that the aviation and nautical information portion of the test is the easiest to inprove with study. The only problem is that I don't know where to go look for the information. I saw questions on test three about all kinds of shit that was not in the study guide. Any places that I should go looking for information that will help me pass again in a months time?
 
F

flygurl

New Member
Hello all,
I did not score well on the ASTB. However, I have some flight time including a unique maneuver from very early on in my flight training after only one hour of ground instruction on the maneuver. Extremely quick reaction to an emergency situation after only 6 or 7 hours. Every instructor at that airport was impressed even the owner of my company, the same gentleman that did not want to take me on as a student because I was a young female. High GPA. Half way through my Master's Degree. Owned a restaurant for two years.(leadership skills)Excellent recommendations from my flight instructors even the one that did not believe women should be aviators. My recruiter suggested submitting my package for September despite the low test score. Should I do what he has suggested? Do I have a good chance or should I plan on retaking the ASTB? My score was 42 and I studied for a month! ARCO, BARRONS (both officer and flight), testing center was extremely noisy, the laptop I took the exam on was extremely small being so close to the screen gave me a headache!!! LOL. I am not justifying my low test score by any means but next time I will choose the test location in San Antonio or Kingsville... I heard those two were much quieter and had larger screens. ;)

Any recommendations or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Flygurl
 
CUPike11

CUPike11

Still avoiding work as much as possible....
None
Contributor
flygurl said:
Hello all,
I did not score well on the ASTB. However, I have some flight time including a unique maneuver from very early on in my flight training after only one hour of ground instruction on the maneuver. Extremely quick reaction to an emergency situation after only 6 or 7 hours. Every instructor at that airport was impressed even the owner of my company, the same gentleman that did not want to take me on as a student because I was a young female. High GPA. Half way through my Master's Degree. Owned a restaurant for two years.(leadership skills)Excellent recommendations from my flight instructors even the one that did not believe women should be aviators. My recruiter suggested submitting my package for September despite the low test score. Should I do what he has suggested? Do I have a good chance or should I plan on retaking the ASTB? My score was 42 and I studied for a month! ARCO, BARRONS (both officer and flight), testing center was extremely noisy, the laptop I took the exam on was extremely small being so close to the screen gave me a headache!!! LOL. I am not justifying my low test score by any means but next time I will choose the test location in San Antonio or Kingsville... I heard those two were much quieter and had larger screens. ;)

Any recommendations or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Flygurl
Click to expand...

Sounds like you have some good stats, but you should be confident in yourself and answer the question if you should apply again. The boards look at the "whole person" concept and that sentiment is echoed in MULTIPLE threads on AW.

You only get 3 chances to take the ASTB in a lifetime, and they don't take your higher score if you score lower, so consider that as well. If you believe you can score higher, then go for it, but whatever the 2nd score is, that will wipe out the first score, as least from what I know.

You could always apply and start studying for it again too. Good luck with everything.
 
K

KW83

New Member
flygurl said:
Hello all,
I did not score well on the ASTB. However, I have some flight time including a unique maneuver from very early on in my flight training after only one hour of ground instruction on the maneuver. Extremely quick reaction to an emergency situation after only 6 or 7 hours. Every instructor at that airport was impressed even the owner of my company, the same gentleman that did not want to take me on as a student because I was a young female. High GPA. Half way through my Master's Degree. Owned a restaurant for two years.(leadership skills)Excellent recommendations from my flight instructors even the one that did not believe women should be aviators. My recruiter suggested submitting my package for September despite the low test score. Should I do what he has suggested? Do I have a good chance or should I plan on retaking the ASTB? My score was 42 and I studied for a month! ARCO, BARRONS (both officer and flight), testing center was extremely noisy, the laptop I took the exam on was extremely small being so close to the screen gave me a headache!!! LOL. I am not justifying my low test score by any means but next time I will choose the test location in San Antonio or Kingsville... I heard those two were much quieter and had larger screens. ;)

Any recommendations or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Flygurl
Click to expand...


OK, no one will really know your chances regardless of your scores...that said, it never hurts to have higher scores in your package. But as for the testing situation you described, I don't think it matters. I scored just fine sitting in the office of the human resource assistant at my local OSS who has fairly colorful language (i.e. it was noisy) not to mention (but I will) all of the other traffic going in and out of that office. Nothing beats just knowing all of the material that is readily available to you. Some advice: study more, and then study some more if you need to because if you do happen to take it at a "less noisy" location and there happens to be just the same amount of noise as when you took it the first time, you can only blame yourself for not scoring higher. Buck up, because if you do make it you will be held accountable for everything.

Short version: study more and take it again. Can't hurt, unless you do worse.
 
blarged

blarged

ready
flygurl said:
My recruiter suggested submitting my package for September despite the low test score. Should I do what he has suggested? Do I have a good chance or should I plan on retaking the ASTB?
Click to expand...

Yes and yes. Hope for the best and plan for the worst. You can apply with that score. If you get picked up, fantastic. If you do not get picked up, you have an easy way to 'significantly improve' your package (which is what you will need to do to re-apply without waiting 6 months).

Get your package submitted as soon as possible (by tomorrow I believe for September boards) and immediately start studying for the ASTB again.
 
L

Longhorny

New Member
I took the ASTB today and here is a rough idea of what I got for SNA, what do you think?

65 8/8/8
BS Aerospace Engineering from UT-Austin 2.8/4.0
Plenty of simulator hours both on Microsoft Flight sim and real life simulators as part of college, and a one hour introductory flight in a cessna
Have not taken the PRT yet but I ran a 15:51 5k senior year of high school (2 time Texas 5A xc-championship qualifier)
Work experience includes software tester for a flight data analyses suite that commercial airliners use and an internship with a DoD contractor who works on developing composite material parts for army, navy, etc.
 
CUPike11

CUPike11

Still avoiding work as much as possible....
None
Contributor
squarebullet said:
Good score. Which one of those numbers represent your score on the Spatial Apperception part of the test?
Click to expand...

None of those scores represent Spatial apperception by itself.

The OAR (Officer Aptitude Rating) score is affected by performance on the first 3 subtests, math skills, reading comp, and mechanical comp. The score is used to predict academic performance in Navy OCS.

The AQR (Academic Qualifications Rating) is affected by performance on all subtests, but the strongest influence is made by the Math Skills test. The AQR is used to predict performance in Aviation Preindoctrination (API) and primary phase ground school.

The Pilot Flight Aptitude Rating (PFAR) is affected by performance on all subtests, with the greatest contribution being made by the Aviation & Nautical section and Spatial Apperception tests. This is used to predict performance for Student Naval Aviators.

The Flight Officer Aptitude Rating (FOFAR) is affected by performance on all subtests, but the greatest contribution is made by the Math Skills test. This is used to predict primary flight performance for student Naval Flight Officers.

In other words, you won't know how you do on each individual section. Scores aren't broken down that way and no one knows how much exactly each score ties in. The above is straight from the Barron's test prep book I used.
 
L

Longhorny

New Member
Yah, I really wish it would tell you your raw scores after each section or after you finish the thing. Black boxes kinda suck sometimes
 
BigL17

BigL17

Member
My 4 cents

First off if you are reading anything in this thread you are off to a good start. I am going to simply tell you what I did in order to prepare for the ASTB.

I took the paper version the first time and got AQR: 1. PFAR: 1. FOFAR: 1. OAR: 26. Which was complete BULL@#!%. I took the computer version yesterday and scored an AQR: 6. PFAR: 6. FOFAR: 5. OAR: 63. At the testing facility they told me most likely they graded the paper test with the wrong form.

So my first piece of advice would be to take the computer based version instead if you can't its not a problem. With the computer version you get your scores immediately after the test instead of waiting 2-3 weeks for them as with the paper version, and you can move along with you application process. The computer version is exactly like the written test it’s just on a comp (DUHH).

Books: I bought the Barron’s book which was helpful, but it does have some mistakes in the book, but if you are aware enough to notice those mistakes you are already doing well. I also used the CliffsTestPrepMilitary Flight Aptitude Tests to prepare for the Spatial Apperception Test. Just type the title in the Google book search and it will show you a limited preview, but that should be all you need. I did not purchase any other books so just look what people have said regarding other books on the subject.

Websites: If you don’t feel like purchasing a book they are many websites that can help you. A few that helped me were the famous: Grifitto gouge, as well as Navy-Officer, and finally my favorite Pettersons.com. These websites have practically everything you need to know and more about the ASTB. In addition to those website I found that PurpleMath, as well as TestPrepReview would get you more than ready for the Math Skills Test. I’ll put the links at the end of the post.

Also since I have no previous flight experience I downloaded Google Earth and messed around with the flight simulator portion of the program just to get feel of what a pilots sees from the cockpit. Go to http://earth.google.com/intl/en/userguide/v4/flightsim/index.html for the flight sim. controls.

The best thing you can do is study under the same time constraints as in the test; this will give you a feel at what pace you should be completing each problem. For myself I found that mainly with the reading portion when studying I flew through it worrying about time, and as a result did poorly. Simply slowing down I did much better, came test time I found it rather easy. So just find the pace which works for you and you will do fine.

I hope that some part of this post assisted you in preparing for the ASTB, or least gave you some ideas on better ways to study. Good luck to all.

Grifitto gouge: http://www.grafitto.com/~mark/astb/

Navy-Officer: http://www.navy-officer.com/astb.html#gouge

Pettersons.com: http://www.petersons.com/dod/

PurpleMath: http://www.purplemath.com/modules/index.htm

TestPrepReview: http://www.testprepreview.com/modules/mathematics3.htm

Also thanks to all those who posted before me with helpful tips.
 
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