Hooray, it's finally my turn to post! I just took the test on the 15th (first time) and scored a 69 8/7/8. All in all (despite what I told my friends, family and peers) the test was not very difficult overall apart from the math and joystick portions. I spent about six weeks studying intently, about an hour every other day, though I've been reading up on gouge and collecting study materials for over a year now. The two biggest helps were the oft-posted personal astb study guide and ACT practice tests, especially for math. I did buy the Accepted book, but I did not get much out of it. For my part, it was nothing I hadn't read already and served best as a set of practice questions. If you're not a standardized test god you may find it useful.
Math: "work" problems. Logarithms, probability, exponents (including fractional exponents). There were a few geometry problems, but any formula you'd probably need is provided on the side of the screen. The important thing with the math section is to work fast but accurately. The test ended before I used up all of the time available to me. I think I had maybe 5-10 minutes left? I was surprised, and if I had known I'd have so much time left I would have relaxed a little bit more and worked more accurately. You don't have a calculator, so it's important not to get frazzled. Stop and think and you can usually answer any question. I made a stupid calculating mistake on one problem and got a result that wasn't any of the four choices, so I made a guess to continue on, and I know now that I was wrong.
Reading: Seemed to alternate between dry Navy Instructions and generic passages. Since the test is adaptive I was convinced that every time it gave me a generic passage (which were much easier) that I messed up, but I guess we'll never know! Like everyone else has said, only one passage has only information that can be gained from the passage. Not really much you can study, just do a billion practice problems until you get the idea down and it's pretty easy.
Mechanical: Know the concepts of potential and kinetic energy, Bernoulli Principle, basic electrical theory, how falling bodies accelerate.....the personal ASTB study guide was a good source for this one.
For the joystick section, just relax and roll with it as best you can, because shit's crazy and the controls are loose and awful. I was on the planes for maybe 5, 10% of the time at most. It was probably much, much less and I still came out dandy. Fortunately mean distance from the planes is scored too, so just try and stay close! I got to do part of this section twice because APEX went down, and to be honest the second try only barely helped. Good luck!
Math: "work" problems. Logarithms, probability, exponents (including fractional exponents). There were a few geometry problems, but any formula you'd probably need is provided on the side of the screen. The important thing with the math section is to work fast but accurately. The test ended before I used up all of the time available to me. I think I had maybe 5-10 minutes left? I was surprised, and if I had known I'd have so much time left I would have relaxed a little bit more and worked more accurately. You don't have a calculator, so it's important not to get frazzled. Stop and think and you can usually answer any question. I made a stupid calculating mistake on one problem and got a result that wasn't any of the four choices, so I made a guess to continue on, and I know now that I was wrong.
Reading: Seemed to alternate between dry Navy Instructions and generic passages. Since the test is adaptive I was convinced that every time it gave me a generic passage (which were much easier) that I messed up, but I guess we'll never know! Like everyone else has said, only one passage has only information that can be gained from the passage. Not really much you can study, just do a billion practice problems until you get the idea down and it's pretty easy.
Mechanical: Know the concepts of potential and kinetic energy, Bernoulli Principle, basic electrical theory, how falling bodies accelerate.....the personal ASTB study guide was a good source for this one.
For the joystick section, just relax and roll with it as best you can, because shit's crazy and the controls are loose and awful. I was on the planes for maybe 5, 10% of the time at most. It was probably much, much less and I still came out dandy. Fortunately mean distance from the planes is scored too, so just try and stay close! I got to do part of this section twice because APEX went down, and to be honest the second try only barely helped. Good luck!
