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

prestonaz

Active Member
Time for some humility.

My scores were 48 5/5/6, first try.

Here is what I have to say about the test. I just took it two hours ago.

Math: There are going to be some questions having to do with exponents, make sure of that. I got questions (multiple) asking me to simplify x^2+5-3x/x^3-4x+6. I froze, no doubt. There were a few questions on distance as well as consecutive discounts (discount 30,000 20%, then discount it again at 25%. Overall, difficult, but man this will not be hard to improve on with a little elbow grease.

Reading Comprehension: Lines and lines of dull and boring words. Hard to study for. Move on and take the beating.

Mechanical Comprehension: I actually thought I did really well on this portion, but maybe that isn't a good sign. One pulley question and a couple of lever questions, what the formula for work is (force*distance), and questions on what a capacitor vs resistor vs I have to study Jesus Christ.

-----------

Aviation and Nautical History: Nothing about boats, nothing about pitch vs roll vs yaw, mostly nautical history. Who was the first woman to fly Trans-atlantic (Earheart), if you're flying 100 knots and there is wind resistance of 20 knots, what is your actual speed? stuff along those lines.

Dichotic listening: Easy, but I guess I could have been faster.

UAV: I was fast, 1-3 seconds for each one, but I got flustered and missed about 4. It was my fault too, I was so concerned about being fast that I didn't do the compass trick properly. Overall, easy

Flying: H.A.R.D. Half the time I was aimlessly using the throttle and following that plane around on the screen while using the throttle while doing dichotic listening was stressing me the heck out. I'm thinking about purchasing a flight simulator, but I don't know what could simulate the ASTB flying test. Respond if you know if there is one.

Finally, Emergency Procedures: I wrote them down, and did them fine except for the last one, which required my fuel to be low and my power to be medium I think. My screen definitely starting going red but I finally got it. It's not hard. What is hard is doing the emergency procedure while flying while using the throttle.

Let me know if you have any advice, I studied for about 12-15 hours in total. I'll definitely be taking it again, and I'm looking to get that automatic qualification! Keep flying Air Warriors!
 

prestonaz

Active Member
I took the ASTB for the first time yesterday and got a 65 9/9/9. I cannot thank everyone who has posted information on here enough! My background also contributed greatly to my score, as I'm a private and instrument rated helicopter pilot with about 300 flight hours, I'm prior enlisted Marine Corps, and I was in the aeronautics program at Embry-Riddle. However, all of the information and practice you need to get a great score is available free online. Without a doubt if you put a lot of effort into studying you can do just as well. I was lucky and graduated recently, so I had the free time to spend about a month and a half studying all day every day. The last two or three weeks before the test I was studying 8-10 hours every day. I probably spent about 90% of that studying math because it's always been my weakest area. Most people probably don't have time for that, but I can't emphasize enough that the most important thing you can do is STUDY STUDY STUDY! I also took the day before the test to relax and do nothing (very important), got a good night sleep, and gave myself time in the morning to eat a good breakfast. There isn't a whole lot more I can say that hasn't already been said throughout this thread, but I'll add what I can even though the whole thing went by as a blur!

Math - I got a decent amount of percentages, percentages of percentages, interest, etc. Had some D=RT, I think one probability question. I had one question that was something along the lines of (x^2-2x-6)/(x^3-5x^2+7) and I couldn't get it to look like any of the answers so I ended up guessing. No logs or matrices, which made me think I didn't do well enough to get to them but I don't know. Some of the percentage and D=RT problems got complicated, and I spent a lot of time studying them so I don't think I got any wrong. I got a question on binary (how is the number 4 written in binary? 0100). The best resource I had for the math section was Khan Academy. I think I filled an entire notebook using it as scratch paper going through as much as I could on Khan Academy and it definitely helped. Overall, nothing surprising that hasn't already been mentioned.

Reading - As most say, lots of very dry, hard to focus on passages about naval regulations and such. I seemed to get a non-naval regulations question that was much easier to follow between every naval-regulations question. That made me feel like I wasn't doing too well. I also ended up running out of time in this section but I felt like I had answered at least 20 questions by that point. I don't know for sure. I did go through the reading section of the Trivium and Test Prep Books ASTB guides (I'll discuss those guides further down), and I never skipped the reading section in practice tests. That all probably helped a bit. I think maybe if you try reading through the Federal Aviation Regulations and try to make sense of that it will help you practice for both reading and aviation at the same time. https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/faa_regulations/ you'd probably be best to start with "General Operating and Flight Rules (14 CFR Part 91)."

Mechanical - Mostly conceptual, I think I used my scratch paper once or twice to do a very, very simple calculation. Khan Academy is another great resource. I had a few questions on pulleys, Bernoulli's principle, a question on the symbols used in electrical circuits. Again, nothing surprising that hasn't been mentioned here already.

Aviation/Nautical Info - I got mostly aviation questions (what do all red lights on a VASI mean [too low], transponder squawk code for loss of communication [7600], what are the characteristics of unstable air [turbulence and good visibility] etc.), a few history questions (The primary strategic bomber used in the 1950s [B-36], etc.) I did get one question asking how aircraft carrier design changed to compensate for larger aircraft such as the 33 ton F-14 Tomcat. I wasn't 100% sure on the answer to this, the answer were along the lines of A. More powerful hydraulic catapults [I disregarded this answer because there are no hydraulic catapults that I know of] B. Take-off power of the aircraft [I disregarded this answer because although modern aircraft have some powerful engines, I don't think they're able to compensate enough]. C. Something about longer runways on carriers I think? or the answer I went with, D. Larger, more powerful catapults. It seemed to make the most sense, but I could definitely have been wrong on it. I also had a question on some pilot I never heard of and I don't remember the name of (I tried to get myself to remember his name for you guys, I promise and I'm sorry lol) and what war did he participate in what was considered to be one of the most complex dogfights in history. I guessed WW2 because they had some pretty damn complex dogfights, but idk for sure. I also had a couple nautical information questions. I think you can easily find all the knowledge you need for the aviation and nautical information, but it's really hard to study for the history questions without studying the entirety of naval aviation history. The Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge is great, and I also recommend the FAA's Aeronautical Information Manual: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/media/AIM_Basic_dtd_10-12-17.pdf if you want a physical copy, you can go to your local pilot shop (which will probably have lots of other great books and manuals as well) or probably order it online. The whole thing is called the FAR/AIM. (Federal Aviation Regulations I mentioned in the reading section, and Aeronautical Information Manual all in the same book). I recommend the most recent year, and they're not terribly expensive.

Naval Aviation Trait Facet Inventory - as most have described it, would you rather drive your car through a retirement home on bingo night, or burn down an orphanage. I did notice one thing about many of the questions I haven't seen anyone else mention. On a lot of them, it will give you options that say something like "I USUALLY lash out at others when I'm under stress" or "I SOMETIMES break the rules." Since neither of them describe me at all, I often found myself picking the one that said "sometimes" rather than "usually" because saying it happens less often is the most applicable when it doesn't actually ever happen at all. There are a few that you'll have trouble deciding on, but as others have said, look at them from the perspective of a military leader and aviator/NFO.

UAV Portion - The flashcards posted in this thread were great. I practiced them for hours, and probably spent about 5 hours in one day practicing them in the week leading up to my test. I would have my wife time me while I went through them, but that's not entirely accurate because the flashcards load slower and you have to click more than once. You'll also be quicker on the actual test because you don't need to read which parking lot to identify, it tells you in the headphones. The compass trick is good if you're really just not great with cardinal directions, but I HIGHLY recommend trying to move past it and do it without the compass trick. I've got a ton of experience with using cardinal directions and compasses and all that, so it wasn't an issue for me. With enough practice you can do the same though! I found the compass trick to be too slow. Without it, I was able to answer the questions in 1.1-1.3 seconds and I got 3 wrong. One important thing though, THE TEST DID NOT ALLOW ME UNLIMITED PRACTICE!!!! I don't know if they recently changed it, but it let me do only 8 practice questions and then it forced me to start the test. I was looking forward to sitting there and practicing for 10 minutes and I was not allowed to.

Dichotic listening - Tilt your head toward the ear you need to be listening to, it helps!

Stick and Throttle Tracking - I was given an X-52 HOTAS, and I probably have several hundred hours in flight simulators with an X-56 so that was nice. It was in good condition, and I didn't have any issues with using it. Both the stick and throttle did have a little bit of a deadzone in the middle which threw me off a bit. The throttle being neutral in the middle rather than all the way back threw me off a bit too, but I tried thinking of it like a helicopter collective and that helped. Also, yes the stick has pitch inverted, but with a solid black background giving no reference it does make this a little tricky. What I would recommend is practice in a flight simulator using 1st person view and the camera forward such that there are no cockpit instruments or any part of the aircraft visible. Maybe just a HUD so you have a reticle to follow or something like that. Practice like that a lot, and then when you're in the test try to imagine that's your perspective. It's still kinda tricky, I felt myself instinctively moving my feet trying to yaw lol I also kept trying to roll and then pitch up to chase the target. This test is CLEARLY designed to make it impossible to track the targets perfect, but I think as long as you keep your controls moving in the general direction toward the target, and perform the dichotic listening and emergency procedure well (write the emergency procedures down!), you'll be ok. For the simultaneous stick and throttle multi-tasking I tried two methods: The first I tried scanning my eyes back and forth between the throttle target and the stick target very quickly, much like an instrument pilot quickly scans gauges. I also tried focusing on the stick target while watching the throttle target in my peripheral vision. I don't know that either was better, the whole damn thing is just too chaotic lol. For the emergency procedure I recommend you at least TRY to continue flying while you execute them. It only gave me each emergency once, and they're fairly simple to solve, so just do your best to keep pushing the controls in the general direction of the target. I also realized right before the emergency procedures section that the HOTAS had suction cups on the bottom to keep it from sliding on the desk. That helped, so check to see if yours does too.

As I said before, there's absolutely no reason you or anyone else can't get a great score on this test. As long as you're willing to put forth the effort that would be required of a successful naval aviator/flight officer/any officer, you will do just fine. STUDY STUDY STUDY!!!

(Edit: I forgot to discuss the study guides I used! I used both Trivium and Test Prep Books, and they were meh. I started my studying with those and it was a good introduction to everything that would be on the test, but some of their information is wrong. Trivium would do things in the examples without explaining them, but Test Prep Books explained things a bit better. I can't remember which one, but one of the guides had a picture of a compass that had 400 degrees and the S for South was backward. That right there about sums up the study guides I think lol.

ALSO! A lot of the gouge documents on here are great but I really only used them for history information. I found the way they formatted math questions to be difficult to follow, and some of the information was wrong. For example, every piece of gouge I read said that fog forms when warm air moves over cooler water. This is not necessarily true! It sound like they're talking about advection fog, which would be correct, but specifically mentioning water like that makes me think of steam fog. Steam fog occurs when cooler air moves over warmer water. I always remember this because it was described to me as watching steam come off a hot cup of coffee on a cold day. Here is weather.gov's description of fog types and you'll see what I mean: https://www.weather.gov/source/zhu/ZHU_Training_Page/fog_stuff/fog_definitions/Fog_definitions.html

Overall, the study guides and gouge is good for getting a good idea of everything that will be on the test, and it's good for information you can't easily find anywhere else, but I recommend trying to study from the most official/reputable sources as possible.)

Are you in AZ? If so, I could really use your help
 

Ranch Dubois

New Member
Time for some humility.

My scores were 48 5/5/6, first try.

Here is what I have to say about the test. I just took it two hours ago.

Math: There are going to be some questions having to do with exponents, make sure of that. I got questions (multiple) asking me to simplify x^2+5-3x/x^3-4x+6. I froze, no doubt. There were a few questions on distance as well as consecutive discounts (discount 30,000 20%, then discount it again at 25%. Overall, difficult, but man this will not be hard to improve on with a little elbow grease.

Reading Comprehension: Lines and lines of dull and boring words. Hard to study for. Move on and take the beating.

Mechanical Comprehension: I actually thought I did really well on this portion, but maybe that isn't a good sign. One pulley question and a couple of lever questions, what the formula for work is (force*distance), and questions on what a capacitor vs resistor vs I have to study Jesus Christ.

-----------

Aviation and Nautical History: Nothing about boats, nothing about pitch vs roll vs yaw, mostly nautical history. Who was the first woman to fly Trans-atlantic (Earheart), if you're flying 100 knots and there is wind resistance of 20 knots, what is your actual speed? stuff along those lines.

Dichotic listening: Easy, but I guess I could have been faster.

UAV: I was fast, 1-3 seconds for each one, but I got flustered and missed about 4. It was my fault too, I was so concerned about being fast that I didn't do the compass trick properly. Overall, easy

Flying: H.A.R.D. Half the time I was aimlessly using the throttle and following that plane around on the screen while using the throttle while doing dichotic listening was stressing me the heck out. I'm thinking about purchasing a flight simulator, but I don't know what could simulate the ASTB flying test. Respond if you know if there is one.

Finally, Emergency Procedures: I wrote them down, and did them fine except for the last one, which required my fuel to be low and my power to be medium I think. My screen definitely starting going red but I finally got it. It's not hard. What is hard is doing the emergency procedure while flying while using the throttle.

Let me know if you have any advice, I studied for about 12-15 hours in total. I'll definitely be taking it again, and I'm looking to get that automatic qualification! Keep flying Air Warriors!


If you're aiming for AQ scores, then first off, great. Trying for 8's and 9's is a good objective. However, you'll have to severely increase your study time in order to get there. I spent any downtime I had at my office job (and my commute to/from) studying ASTB flashcards on quizlet. There's plenty of sets and they especially helped the MCT ANIT and UAV sections. Download the app on your phone and study every little chance you have. Practice MST and MCT problems when you have more time. There's plenty of gouge in this thread, on this site, and all over the internet.

Everybody studies differently, but I know personally that 12-15 hrs wouldn't cut it for me. I had about 2 weeks to study for my ASTB and I spent anywhere from 5-10 hours per day. In the mornings before work, to/from work, at work, before dinner, after dinner, in bed, literally every chance I had. I have no prior extensive experience in math, science, or naval aviation. This is a test of your dedication, and an example of what I expect much of flight school to be like.
 

YeRok

New Member
Hey guys, I took the ASTB for the first time today and scored a 49 5/7/6. My cumulative GPA is about a 2.6, I believe I can raise that to a 2.8 by the time I apply. My question is do you think it’s worth retesting to get a higher score. I feel like I can do better, but at the same time don’t know if the risk is worth it, just in case I somehow scored less for pilot. My recruiter said if I think I can improve I should consider retesting, but thinks my scores are pretty solid. As of now, on the aviation calculator I’m in the yellow. I’m going to apply only SNA. Also when I took the test I was not allow to do the compass trick, did anyone else experience this?

Just curious how you plan to raise the GPA before you apply. Are you still enrolled in college courses? Wondering cause I'm almost finished with my degree but really want to raise my GPA. I think I remember my OR saying I can't apply til I get my degree in hand and I have a legitimate enough GPA to continue. Thanks.
 

prestonaz

Active Member
Just curious how you plan to raise the GPA before you apply. Are you still enrolled in college courses? Wondering cause I'm almost finished with my degree but really want to raise my GPA. I think I remember my OR saying I can't apply til I get my degree in hand and I have a legitimate enough GPA to continue. Thanks.
In order to apply for aviation this year you’ll need that 5 to be a 6 MINIMUM. 8/7/7 is an automatic qualification. Think about that
 

FrewHeliPilot

New Member
for the part where you said you received a question on a guy you never heard of about dogfighting and ww2 was the answer. I got this question and they guys name is Randell (middle letter I forgot) Campbell (may have spelled last name wrong). I put ww2 as the answer as well. I hope that this is the same as you got and rings a bell. I also go to Riddle.
 

FrewHeliPilot

New Member
Took the ASTB about two weeks ago and got a 56 5/5/5.. I studied for 5 hours the day before and that is it. I had no idea what I was walking into.
Didnt know about this website until after I took it unfortunately.
Have been going through a lot of the gouge on here and it is really helping me narrow down what to study for.
Scheduled to take it again September 18th.

On my test:

Math: would've been much easier had a just done a ton of word problems and fraction practice.
Lots of DRT, had the problem where guy donates 1/8th of his 2 1/2 ton crop, how much did he donate question?
had the question where Joe smith drives at 3 different speeds for 3 different amount of time and then asks how far did he go?
Had a few simplifying questions, nothing too crazy. Know your rules like PEMDAS and FOIL, cuz if you do not then you will have no chance to get those questions right.
No matrices or logs.. going to expect them for the second time though.

Reading: Easy, just be careful, some answers could be correct but only 1 is taken directly from the text.

Mechanical:
struggled b/c I didnt really have enough time to brush up on anything and did not really know what to expect.
had questions on levers, pulleys and gears just like everyone else.
had the one Q: if a pulley had a radius of ___ how much rope will it use if it spins ___ times.
They pulled from a lot of different physics concepts, so just study a physics 101 textbook or high school physics, everything I feel would be covered.
I saw Newtons and OHMs law.

Aviation:
I was really bad, did not know much going in.
Now, I am studying the FAA book and also picked up William Kershners Student Pilots Flight Manual and it is really good! especially since I have virtually zero flight experience.
saw question that asked something like what are the 4 forces on a plane when flying or something like that, also a question on what force is not acting on a plane.
Questions on what controls pitch and what controls yawing.
Question on airspeed and groundspeed and how to calculate it.
Question on some instruments plane and what they measure. (sorry cant remember exactly)
Question on what would happen if a small plane landed behind a bigger plane with a bigger engine...something along that line.
It was a lot of basic stuff that I know now. Just studying the FAA handbook wouldve really helped me.

Nautical and Naval History
questions on shirts of Airmen, where do you eat on the ship (what is it called), who broke the sound barrier, forecastle, port and starboard. I got kicked from this pretty early I think. Question on what plane was designed/used to counter the germans silent submarine in WWII...something like that. Who broke the sound barrier, and different classifications for aircraft and what squadrons fly what planes.


The rest was very hard for me, especially UAV and PBM because I had no idea about either of those before going in, sad I heard about this site after.


Looking for some flashcards or materials on aircraft classifications and aircraft history of the Navy, I feel like this is my biggest weakspot that I dont know how to study for.

ALSO, for those of you who took the ASTB TWICE!!! What were the differences you saw in the test from the first time to the second time??
Was the material in math and mechanical much different? For example I did not see any questions about Logs or Matrices on my first attempt and I saw lots of DRT, should I now just expect the opposite?

Thanks for everything/anything!
I recommend the BLUE JACKETS MANUAL 25th edition (newest)
 

AllissaMichala

New Member
Took the ASTB for the first time today and it was ... rough.

I am applying for both SNA and SNFO. Scored a 48 5/6/6. I definitely want to retake it in 30 days. But I figured I might as well give everyone my take on the exam.

Math — the questions were not hard which threw me for a loop. My issue was that I had such big numbers that took me a long time to work through. Or I would have a word problem that gave me three numbers and asked for 2 other numbers and it took me a couple minutes to calculate everything. Time was not my friend. I ran out of time on this section. I got a couple of DRT questions, but they weren’t like the DRT questions you see on Khan Academy. It was more like “John’s car measures 40 miles per gallon if he drives 45 mph. If he drives 60 mph and the amount of gas per gallon is 20% what it is at 40 how far can he drive if he has 11 gallons of gas going 60mph?” It was a mess. I got percentage problems too. And a few long simplifying questions with multiple exponents. I can’t remember what else, but it was mostly word problems.

Reading — the worst. Dull. Dry. Boring. It was hard to focus (especially since I was taking the exam at 0700). This was the hardest section for me.

Mechanics — pretty much nothing I studied was on the exam. My exam was solely springs and electrical circuits. I had one pulley question. One question asking what the formula for Power was. Something about terminal velocity. No gears. No levers. No mechanical advantage. Mostly electrical.

NATFI — lmao. “If I hit a car and no one was around I’d leave the scene” “I lie on my taxes”
Just do your best.

ANIT — no nautical questions. 1 history question (something about finding silent submarines and Germans which I have seen mentioned on here before) the rest were reallllly specific flight questions. I can’t remember them exactly but I didn’t see any of those questions I received mentioned here on this thread. Nothing about forces acting on a plane. Nothing about roll vs yaw vs pitch and their axes. I did get one question about VFR and one about VASI. No weather.

PBM —

UAV — study the flash cards that are constantly posted on this site. It comes in handy. Learn how to do the compass trick without needing the compass. The headphones get really annoying because the timer starts when it pops up not after the guy says which parking lot to identify. I might take my headphones off for this section when I try it again. I was faster at responding once I started to ignore him. Averaged 2-3s. Missed 3.

Dichotic listening — not that bad. Trying to differentiate between “3” and “B” or “2” and “U” was difficult. But this part might have been easier for me since I work in retail and I have an earpiece in 8 hours a day and I have to listen to people in my ear while also listening to customers. Close your eyes during this part.

Tracking — HARD. I have not played any video games since high school (which was about five or six years ago). The inverted controls were hard to get used to and there was a huge dead zone in the middle of the screen. Sometimes the tracker thing would move reallllllly slow and sometimes it would zip across the screen. I definitely need to play some call of duty with the controls inverted lol or old Atari games.

Tracking with the dichotic listening was horrendous. The dichotic listening part was fine for me, but I was awful at the tracking portion. Trying to figure out the inverted controls while pressing buttons was hard. (Again. I need to play more video games).

When you get to the emergency procedures write them down. Fixing them takes 2 seconds and it’s not difficult. Once they’re fixed you go back to normal tracking.

Here are the things I used to study:
2 Kaplan GRE prep books (which I barely used and I now regret that).
Barron’s military flight aptitude test book (good source)
Arco military flight book (I hardly used it. It has a lot about different planes in it and I’ll look over that)
Khan Academy and Organic Chemistry Tutor (or something like that) — I used these YouTube channels a lot. I also just searched different types of word problems and “ASTB problems” and “ASVAB problems” on YouTube as well.
Quizlet — I created my own flash card sets and saved other people’s labeled “ASTB” also.
AW — the best material to use is everything on this thread. Download any and every study guide you can get your hands on.

My recruiter told me not to retest and to submit with these scores (and hope the diversity factor helps me???), but I feel like since I know what to expect now I can change my study habits and score better next time especially with my GPA being lower (Organic Chemistry kicked my butt. Twice.).

For reference, I am a 23 year old black female and have a 2.8-2.9 GPA in a Health degree.
The highest level math I have taken was precalculus and I have also taken physics 1 and 2 which really helped the mechanics portion. But I also took those classes maybe 3-4 years ago so refreshing my memory took some work.

All in all, now that I know what to expect I am sure that next time I’m gonna knock it out of the ballpark.

Here’s to not giving up!!
 

Puffinman

New Member
Took the ASTB for the first time today 59 7/7/7
I'm and Aerospace Engineering Graduate with a 2.79 GPA
Applying for SNA

I was thinking of applying with this score and then retaking the ASTB after if I don't get accepted. I'm not sure how viable of a plan that is and was wondering if anyone had any advice on this.

From reading this forum, I gathered that the board doesn't really look at letters of rec and your statement. Does anyone know how valid that is? I've seen that said a few time on here but wasn't sure if it was being said ironically.
 

colonial-aviation

Intermediate Jet
Took the ASTB for the first time today 59 7/7/7
I'm and Aerospace Engineering Graduate with a 2.79 GPA
Applying for SNA

I was thinking of applying with this score and then retaking the ASTB after if I don't get accepted. I'm not sure how viable of a plan that is and was wondering if anyone had any advice on this.

From reading this forum, I gathered that the board doesn't really look at letters of rec and your statement. Does anyone know how valid that is? I've seen that said a few time on here but wasn't sure if it was being said ironically.

Your scores are good, I'd hold off on retaking if you get denied, which you probably won't be since you have a STEM major and good scores.

Scuttlebutt around here is that LORs and motivational statements now matter more for applicants.
 

John-Ryan

New Member
Finally posting after weeks of combing through these threads. I took the OAR yesterday and went from a 44 to a 61 thanks to this site, so thank you to everyone who has contributed! I attribute the 44 to poor preparation but mostly to rushing the test (I finished the math and mech sections in about half the given time). The second go around I gave each problem its fair share and you can see the results. I honestly thought I was progressing too slow and, based on the difficulty I had with the problems, was not expecting a good score at all. I'm 24 with a 2.8 GPA in Chemistry.

Study Materials
  • GRE/GMAT Math: A Systematic Approach
  • Baron's Military Flight Aptitude Tests
  • Baron's Mechanical Aptitude and Spacial Relations Test
  • Various Gauges on this thread
  • There was a link given earlier about good practice tests. I believe it was Petersons? This contained the best collection of practice tests IMO.
I studied off and on early summer and really dove into it early august up until the test.

Math: I was hoping for a lot of DRT but was only given one and instead was given several problems centered around surface area and volume. There were a couple of complex equations involving binomials, exponents. No logs or binary. I completed about 13 problems before running out of time i believe? So it's definitely not about the quantity of problems you're completing. I've taken Calc II and Quantum physics and felt no shame when i went to my GRE book and started practicing my fractions again.

Reading: Everyone says this section is awful because it IS awful. Even if you're able to understand the reference paragraph the answers are written to trick you. Key words to look out for are "sometimes" "may" "never". My eyes glazed over after three questions and i read each problem in full about 6 times before i could get an idea of an answer.

Mech: WOW this section was a breeze. Understand everything on the given gouges and find practice questions for fulcrums, pulleys, and the such. Like others have said before it's just testing if you understand basic concepts of physics.

I'm getting my package ready now and intend to go for SWO and Intel. I feel confident with SWO even though my GPA is the minimum and i still want to try for Intel even if i'm way below the average. I've looked at the average data of those accepted into the SWO program but any insight from y'all would be greatly appreciated.
 

FormerRecruitingGuru

Making Recruiting Great Again
Finally posting after weeks of combing through these threads. I took the OAR yesterday and went from a 44 to a 61 thanks to this site, so thank you to everyone who has contributed! I attribute the 44 to poor preparation but mostly to rushing the test (I finished the math and mech sections in about half the given time). The second go around I gave each problem its fair share and you can see the results. I honestly thought I was progressing too slow and, based on the difficulty I had with the problems, was not expecting a good score at all. I'm 24 with a 2.8 GPA in Chemistry.

Study Materials
  • GRE/GMAT Math: A Systematic Approach
  • Baron's Military Flight Aptitude Tests
  • Baron's Mechanical Aptitude and Spacial Relations Test
  • Various Gauges on this thread
  • There was a link given earlier about good practice tests. I believe it was Petersons? This contained the best collection of practice tests IMO.
I studied off and on early summer and really dove into it early august up until the test.

Math: I was hoping for a lot of DRT but was only given one and instead was given several problems centered around surface area and volume. There were a couple of complex equations involving binomials, exponents. No logs or binary. I completed about 13 problems before running out of time i believe? So it's definitely not about the quantity of problems you're completing. I've taken Calc II and Quantum physics and felt no shame when i went to my GRE book and started practicing my fractions again.

Reading: Everyone says this section is awful because it IS awful. Even if you're able to understand the reference paragraph the answers are written to trick you. Key words to look out for are "sometimes" "may" "never". My eyes glazed over after three questions and i read each problem in full about 6 times before i could get an idea of an answer.

Mech: WOW this section was a breeze. Understand everything on the given gouges and find practice questions for fulcrums, pulleys, and the such. Like others have said before it's just testing if you understand basic concepts of physics.

I'm getting my package ready now and intend to go for SWO and Intel. I feel confident with SWO even though my GPA is the minimum and i still want to try for Intel even if i'm way below the average. I've looked at the average data of those accepted into the SWO program but any insight from y'all would be greatly appreciated.

You should probably double check that PA for intel....
 
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