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

[itsderekk]

Just wanted to post here and thank everyone who made this thread extremely helpful. After 3 weeks of hard studying, I took the ASTB for my first time today and scored a 67 9/9/8, and was extremely excited.

There’s plenty of good info on this thread about test-taking strategies, so I’ll try to keep my advice short.

Keys to the test:
1. Understand the ASTB test structure and time management.
2. Be extremely confident on every type of question the test can ask (especially MST, MCT, and ANIT) and how to solve them quickly and accurately. The test will throw you some nasty curveballs which are okay to miss. You can’t know everything, but you need to know what is in the study material! If you can lock those questions down, the curveballs won’t hurt you.
3. Take as many (timed) practice tests from books or Kyle’s/Gomez’s Google drive as possible to become closely familiar with question types. Links to these PDFs can be found in this thread.
4. Study the ANIT Cram cards thoroughly and incorporate ample airspace, carrier flight Jersey, navy history, and navy aircraft and vessel knowledge into your studies.
5. Don’t forget to study the hard stuff. This test is adaptive, so if you do well, the questions will get harder, introducing logs, matrices, and difficult probability questions. You don’t want to miss these questions if you are wanting high score, so make sure you can hit these. I was getting logarithm simplification and matrix multiplication by question 5, which means I was doing well, but I didn’t expect it that early. I’m very glad I studied these.
6. Buy TwoScoops’ ASTB Prep app and the X52. Grind the lessons and the PBM Sims! It’s worth it. If you’re curious, after a few weeks, I was averaging 30-35% on the rear cockpit sim and 29-33% with DLT incorporated. The Terrain Identification on the app is also much more difficult than the real ASTB so it’s very good practice. The UAV sim is great to get reps in and get your time down. Additionally, the practice tests on the app are much harder than the actual test, so it’s very good practice.

Again, thanks to everyone in this thread for all the study material and advice. Putting in my SNA package soon and will be transferring from Coast Guard to Navy!

Feel free to message me with any questions, I’ll try my best to get back to you.

In regards to the math section, how accurate were the practice tests on the ASTB Prep App compared to the actual test? Would you say that majority of information that you learned was primarily through the app or from the drives?

 

[spalclark3]

For those worried about the stick and throttle portion of the test...

Below are my Jantzen sim scores from when I started studying to the night before my ASTB. Had ChatGPT make me graphs because I wanted to visually see my improvement. Thought it was too interesting to not share. These are about 150+ entries, and I did a little more without writing down the scores.

Buy the stick, set your AntiMicroX min dead zone to 3000, and practice endlessly. I started averaging countless 200s, then eventually got down to the 90s-100s. Averaged these near the end and ended up with a 9 PFAR. It is not impossible but a positive mindset will be the key here!

I've just been using my keyboard and mouse at 2 over the medium difficulty. Been getting better, I can consistently get in the 60s and 70s there now. What is the setting that you would say is most accurate to the real test?

 

[LSHD4]

I've just been using my keyboard and mouse at 2 over the medium difficulty. Been getting better, I can consistently get in the 60s and 70s there now. What is the setting that you would say is most accurate to the real test?

Your scores are good at that level, so I would raise the difficulty higher. The test is about 1-2 clicks under max difficulty, I practiced on max diff as did others. Once you get good at a certain difficulty, raise it, and repeat the process until you hopefully end up at the max.

 

[joetting21]

Have you heard back with dates yet? I'm about to submit my I-SEL packet, but I would like to finish out this semester of grad school before leaving. Recruiter is fairly unsure, but says the last guy he had go SNA submitted in January and got a class date in August.

I submitted ISEL in January and got a July OCS date

 

[sawyer_719]

Have you heard back with dates yet? I'm about to submit my I-SEL packet, but I would like to finish out this semester of grad school before leaving. Recruiter is fairly unsure, but says the last guy he had go SNA submitted in January and got a class date in August.

I submitted for ISEL January 31 and heard back March 10 if thats any solace.

 

[DBM]

My recruiter called me saying that the May board has been canceled.

 

[BigTshirt_Billie]