First time taking ASTB, no flight experience, learned everything from this website
51 6/7/7. Not a perfect score but its competitive and I'm proud.
Looking to apply SNA/NFO if I ever get called to MEPS lol.
Little bit about me:
Magna cum laude, BS in Biology from a mini ivy. 22F, D1 goalkeeper, All-Region team (rank under All-American), brief time with team USA. Graduated in May with a job offer as a fed contractor which was rescinded. Was talking/ being recruited by a bunch of funded PhD programs in my fields bc I love research. Started to realize academic/post doc careers sounded like a nightmare. Always have had an interest in the military. Didn't join ROTC at uni bc I was on a full-ride for sports and my school only had Army ROTC. Been a gamer throughout my life which helped massively.
Things I didn’t know about the exam:
- You get tons of time between the sections. I used this to write stuff down for the next section and hype myself up.
- Legit was just locked in a room by myself and a computer with the tech guy listening to music next door. No one watching you so I just talked to myself through most of the test haha.
- If your software crashes, it will save where you left off. I promise. It happened to me like 4 times.
Math: Started off strong with some sqrt, “working together problems” then the software crashed (first time of many) then the questions ramped up exponentially. As in probabilities and solve for X type problems I’ve never seen. I felt like I was missing “a trick” in all these Qs since most of the problems used basic concepts but had a twist/ impossible to solve without a calculator or without spending 10+ minutes. Never got to logs or matrices (studied them anyway). No DRT problems.... Prob my worst score. I think I just had bad luck as I do not think I could have prepared better tbh. I’ve taken up to Calc 2 and gotten As all throughout math. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, but this was certainly a shock to the system..... test got exponentially better from there. Kicked me with ~5 mins remaining.
Reading: Mostly boring stuff. There was no “questions after the reading” like many of the practice problems, just an bunch of closely related statements where you pick the best option. Nothing to report that others haven’t said. I wrote down A,B,C,D And scratched them off as I eliminated choices. I’ve taken the GRE, so I used a lot of similar strategies. No vocab.
Mech: My most painful classes in college was a year of calc based, engineering physics. I went to an engineering school, I was a life science major, and this was the only option you could take. At the time, it made me want to rip my hair out. For this exam, even the hardest questions seemed easy. Def my best section on the OAR. Levers, pulleys, no circuits. Luck balance out from the math section
. There was a chem question related to heat transfer I wouldn’t have known without my prior knowledge. Software crashed once in the middle here too. Kicked me with ~10 minutes remaining.
ANTI: Since I learned all the aviation info from scratch, I was a bit nervous going into this section. I used all the guides I could find and I read the chapters of the FAA handbook. No matter how hard you study, you will have questions you don’t know. I used this forum and read back to page 250. Pretty much ALL of us use the same study resources, so of course, we all get caught on the same problems. Had the infamous “converted to tanker during Iraq question” (it’s the Tomcat NOT Viking, Viking wasn’t even one of the choices). I was asked what elevators do like 4 times lol. Which one of these is not a real boat (i think it’s a U boat which is a sub)? Didn’t know, guessed. And another one about a plane used in Vietnam (I only knew the Growler, so I put that). And “you are flying at 360 and a wind it coming in from 270 at 15kts?, how much do you adjust to stay on course.... or something like that.... (Adjustment = wind speed sin(360-270)). Got kicked after ~5 minutes.
UAV: Probably averaged 2-3seconds. Did not use the compass trick but wrote out all the possible combos. Use the flashcards as a practice but note that the test looks a little different and only looks similar to the 2nd half of the cards. You can do these super quick if you look at the direction, match it to your paper and LISTEN to what direction they want. This technique is really easy to implement on the exam, harder to do beforehand unless you have someone yelling directions at you haha. Didn’t get one wrong. A HUGE boost to my scores. At first, I was really nervous, but as it went on, I got into a flow.
Listening: I asked the tech guy to increase the headphone volume and it crashed the whole computer, so that was fun. After about 10 minutes, the computer booted back up and I prayed it would restore my session. Fortunately, it did! I used the leaning trick and it worked great. I didn’t realize when the test had started and I was confused on the directions, so I def screwed up the first couple sets. After that, I read all the instructions and had no problems.
Tracking: Be warned, they legit give you a MOUNTAIN of text and instructions to read through. I’d highly recommend looking up "ASTB-E: A Simple Guide" on youtube, to get an idea of what you’ll be doing before you get there.
I’ve been playing video games since I could talk but I’d never used throttle and stick. I’ve played sims before, so I felt pretty confident going in just to have that confidence ripped away haha. I’ve used inverted sticks, but this was next level of difficulty. You will think you are failing the WHOLE time. You are not, keep trying, keep going.
My advice would be a lot of the same points others have stated. I maybe actually had the tracker over the target for like 10% of the time... it’s about getting close, not constant precision. Listen over track, listen over track... listen over track.
Finally, write the emergencies down. When I did it, I got the fire first. I twisted the knobs back and pressed the clutch like 4 times but nothing happened. I don’t think I was given credit for that emergency because I did the protocol for the other two emergencies and the problem went away immediately..... oh well.
