Surprises?

[TSmyth]

Gentlemen and ladies,
first and foremost, thank you all for the amazing info posted in this forum. I take the ASTB on the 20th in Indy and feel much better prepared as a result of your info and test gouges.
There are obviously some very intelligent minds within this forum. Seems like the vast majority are in the OAR range of 50-mid 60's. Is it just impossible to score in the 70's on the OAR portion? Was anybody surprised by the difficulty of questions? Were you stifled by the time limits? Perhaps duped into an incorrect response?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

-Todd

 

[RiceOwl06]

Yeah, I just took it this morning, and I would say its not much different than all of the gouge on this site. The mechanical section had a few ones that I wish I had time to think out a little more and get the right answer for sure, but since you have only like 30 seconds or so per, you don't have that luxury. They don't require anything but the most basic calculations, but they are all conceptual. You really have to fly through the Spatial part of it, as you get like 20 seconds per each one. They are also a lot tougher in my opinion than the arco practice ones, as there are some with 2 answers that are very close to one another. You just have to go with your gut and put it down. Don't make the mistake of getting caught up on one, or you will run out of time like I did the first time I took it. Other than that, the rest of it seemed pretty much like an SAT test, and the aviation section wasn't too hard either. But in terms of your question to the OAR, you could look at it, but the distribution of scores is set up so the greater majority of people score in the 40-60 range. It is not impossible though to get a 70, but that is far ahead of the curve. One of our advisors here at our unit said the average score for OAR is like a 52, with 5.2/5.2/5.2 for the others, so a 70 would definitely an awesome score. Good luck with it, you should do fine.

 

[TSmyth]

RiceOwl,

what an incredibly quick reply! Thanks.
Sincerely hope you did well this go around!
Regarding your input, I'll be sure to improve my conceptual grasp of basic mechanics before thursday as well as really try to "see" every possible spatial attitude. I had a feeling the Arco ones were a bit too easy.
Anyway, thanks again and good luck.

 

[nugget81]

I agree with what Riceowl said. Either you know the concepts or you don't, and that's what the test is testing. As for the spatial apperception section, you need to find a system that works for you and stick to it. It is true that the picture on the test is somewhat different than in the ARCO. However, if you have a system that works well, it will continue to work well despite the change. Good Luck!