Hey everyone, relatively short time lurker here. I just took the ASTB today and got 59 7/6/7, which I think I am pretty happy about.
Background: I graduated college with a degree in English in 2023, and took a fair amount of stem courses (but nothing too difficult). The highest math I took was calc 1 and I never took physics, though I did take a physical hydrology course that helped a bit with fluid dynamics. I found out that I needed to take the ASTB prior to Coast Guard OCS about a month and a half ago, so I decided to try and take it on the earlier side so that I'd have time top retest just in case.
Studying overview: I would say I spent about 50-ish hours studying for the ASTB across the board. I spent about 5 hours on math, 15 on ANIT, 15 on physics, and then the rest on the ASTB app simulators. I initially started out with the Mometrix book, which was nice to have a general overview but not something I would rely on heavily, as it doesn't go that in depth about the topics. I spent the majority of my studying using the ASTB app. I felt that it was very useful for ANIT and for practice tests, however after a while you do start seeing repeat questions if you take a lot of them. I did struggle with understanding some of the physics and math concepts using just the app alone. With those concepts, I relied on "The Organic Chemistry Tutor" on YouTube a lot. He has a ton of videos covering everything from math to physics, and I think describes a lot of the concepts very well. Khan academy was also helpful for this. For the stick and throttle section, I used an xbox controller connected to the app to practice. It was useful to get the general feeling of the simulator, but it was not as hard as the real thing.
Math: Relatively straightforward for me. Learn your log and exponent rules, Khan academy has some very helpful videos walking through them.
Reading: Surprisingly difficult, and not really like any of the practice tests I took. I would say to focus on finding and eliminating the misleading answers first to narrow down your choices.
Physics: I got mostly conceptual questions with a few that I had to use equations for. The ASTB prep app helped me the most here.
ANIT: I felt Ok on this section. The ASTB app has a lot of good info, as well as the cram flash cards.
NATFI: Honestly I didn't spend too much time on this section. I went with my gut responses, even if they weren't flattering.
PBM: This is the part of the test that I feel I did the worst on. I missed a few of the parking lot questions because I got flustered, and I feel my nerves got the best of me on the stick and throttle. I was not used to using the joystick either, so that was a learning curve as well. If I could go back, I would get the joystick and throttle and practice with those instead of using an xbox controller and the app. For the terrain, I actually felt reasonably good on this. Make a really good compass rose with all 12 of the directions used. I would find a relatively straight line on the map and align it to my compass, and then would orient it on the zoomed in part to determine what direction it was in (for example, if there was a road that ran east to west, I would rotate the compass rose on the zoomed in picture until east and west were aligned along the road, and then would put which direction was pointing up).
Overall I am fairly happy with how things went. It could be better, but I don't think I will retest unless I get told that I need a more competitive score. Big thanks to everyone who has posted, all of the info here was very helpful.
