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

[Cloddish]

Just had my first attempt. My test crashed as I was about to start the PBM, so they’re having me finish it tomorrow. The math section kicked my ass however. I did Barron’s, trivium, and a lot of Kyle’s for prep. I had several cube roots, one probability problem, and a fair amount of geometry. No DRT and no Logs. I had one simplifying problem, but I think I got it wrong. The problem had a bunch of fraction exponents and a lot of parentheses. It was probably really simple, but my eye just could not catch it. Expecting to have to take it a second time as the Math section felt significantly more difficult than any of the prep I did. It kicked me out with somewhere between 10-13 minutes left, so not ideal to my understanding.

Did the PBM today. I will say, if you’ve never practiced inverted, flight sims help. If you have a lot of flight sim experience, I felt it didn’t help beyond feeling comfortable with inverted controls.. It plays out more like a first person shooter than a flight sim. You follow a cursor with a crosshair. For my next attempt I’m going to look into playing CoD or some other fps inverted. For me they had the flightstick and throttle out on the desk during the whole test, so I fiddled around with them during breaks to get comfortable with how they moved.

like others have said, write down the emergency procedures. When the instructions are presented, I found it very helpful to do a mental practice of the buttons and emergency procedures.

ex: Even numbers=pull trigger, odd numbers=press clutch. Pretend to press the buttons with your thumb or finger hovering over them as if you heard a respective number before it gives you the practice section. Same thing for emergency procedures, go through each one while on the instruction screen(without accidentally advancing, so “air” tap buttons). There is no practice test for the emergency procedures like there are for the vertical, flightstick, and listening sections, it tosses you straight in. So don’t prematurely hit the trigger.

 

[Chingmie]

Took the OAR this morning and scored a 73.

Math was the easiest section. The 2 problems that took the most time were along the lines of 4 guys can build a wall in 10 hrs, what time do they complete the wall if a new guy is added every hour. Make sure you understand fraction exponents. No logs on my test. Kyle's google drive is all you need to prepare for it.

Reading comp felt the hardest since a lot of the answers seem very similar and sometimes they all seem wrong. The passages are also very dry and dense. I had a mix of navy regulation passages, physics-type passages, and dumb easy passages. One question was about light and wavelengths so having prior knowledge on this helped but that's more luck than preparation. I recommend reading navy regulations and physics textbooks to prepare for this if you have the time. This is the least important to study for since it really comes down to logical reasoning and eliminating bad answers.

Mechanical was the hardest and I had to go with my gut (educated guess) on a few of them. Some easy ones were pulleys and mechanical advantage. No tool recognition questions. One question showed waves and asked if a bullet was traveling faster than the speed of sound or slower or at the speed of sound. There was one question where I had absolutely no idea what to answer and I don't remember enough to say it here.

EDIT: by the way the whole time I felt like I was doing horribly and going too slow but i finished each section with a little time to spare so just keep calm and don't rush but also don't spend too long on a problem you know you don't know.

Hello, My name is Charmie and took my OAR twice already. I took it first time and scored 39, I took it on my second try yesterday and scored lowe at 34. I am in desperate for help and guidance . It is my last chance on taking it and would not qualify for officers if not. Anything would help.

 

[matthew1031]

Hello, My name is Charmie and took my OAR twice already. I took it first time and scored 39, I took it on my second try yesterday and scored lowe at 34. I am in desperate for help and guidance . It is my last chance on taking it and would not qualify for officers if not. Anything would help.

Hi Charmie. Are you using kyle's google drive? I highly recommend that for its practice tests. Also check out ilectureonline.com if you're struggling with physics concepts. It's difficult to prepare for reading comprehension but you can look up some navy regulations which are over 50% of the OAR reading comp questions.

 

[Chingmie]

Hi Charmie. Are you using kyle's google drive? I highly recommend that for its practice tests. Also check out ilectureonline.com if you're struggling with physics concepts. It's difficult to prepare for reading comprehension but you can look up some navy regulations which are over 50% of the OAR reading comp questions.

Hello, Yes I have seen it but I struggle in Physics concepts and I have seen those study guides because I bought like 5 different books but seemed too basic compare to the difficulty of the actual test. Thank you for the response and I will check out the ilectureonline.com

I also struggled on the reading portion though I am familiar with the jargons because I am active duty enlisted. The answer choices are very similar and there is no question. It's hard to engage and comprehend

 

[Chingmie]

Just took the test for a second time, first time was mainly to just get familiar and got 7/7/7 57. The scores were good but I have a VERY competitive class at my NROTC unit. Second time around got 8/9/8 60. Do not slack on the UAV flash cards, got 100% on the second try but the first time I missed a handful and let me say the feeling you get from the buzzer sound is reminiscent of this

. I used the Google drive posted over in study guide thread and it was a life saver. Study all the flash cards you can, study until you can't get them wrong not until you get them right. There was still questions in the aviation/nautical information portion I had never encountered but the intuition I built from genuinely understanding instead of memorizing really helped. Mechanical engineer with a 3.5 with pilot as my first choice, assignment in October/November so I'll keep you all updated. You all got this!

Hello, what flashcards did you study? Where can I find?

 

[matthew1031]

Hello, Yes I have seen it but I struggle in Physics concepts and I have seen those study guides because I bought like 5 different books but seemed too basic compare to the difficulty of the actual test. Thank you for the response and I will check out the ilectureonline.com

I also struggled on the reading portion though I am familiar with the jargons because I am active duty enlisted. The answer choices are very similar and there is no question. It's hard to engage and comprehend

Yeah I bought a lot of books as well and after going through two of them I figured my time was better spent with kyle's google drive. Just do the practice exams over and over and over. Study as if it were the test. Spend 40 minutes on the math practice exam, 30 minutes reading navy regulations, and 15 minutes on a mechanical comprehension practice test. After that, spend another hour or so brushing up on math and physics concepts. Do this every day and you will improve your score.

The pulley series on ilectureonline is great and that site has just about every concept you will need to study.

The answer choices are very similar on reading comprehension. You have to look for very minor words that make assumptions not explicitly stated in the text and eliminate that choice. When I finished the math portion I spent the short break it gives you writing rows and rows of 'A B C D' on scratch paper so that I could easily keep track of which answers I eliminated while taking the test.

 

[Chingmie]

Yeah I bought a lot of books as well and after going through two of them I figured my time was better spent with kyle's google drive. Just do the practice exams over and over and over. Study as if it were the test. Spend 40 minutes on the math practice exam, 30 minutes reading navy regulations, and 15 minutes on a mechanical comprehension practice test. After that, spend another hour or so brushing up on math and physics concepts. Do this every day and you will improve your score.

The pulley series on ilectureonline is great and that site has just about every concept you will need to study.

The answer choices are very similar on reading comprehension. You have to look for very minor words that make assumptions not explicitly stated in the text and eliminated that choice. When I finished the math portion I spent the short break it gives you writing rows and rows of 'A B C D' on scratch paper so that I could easily keep track of which answers I eliminated while taking the test.

Okay. I will do that, thank you so much for the help and response !

 

[matthew1031]

Okay. I will do that, thank you so much for the help and response !

You can do it! Failure is not an option!

 

[Chingmie]

You can do it! Failure is not an option!

I know, I cant fail this my last chance. After I scored 39 I was thinking okay I just need to study a more then I'll be fine. And so, I did I was shock to see that my scored went lower at 34. But Physics concepts is what I struggled with I think and the reading so hard to engage and focus ..

 

[hcard0311]

Hello all, I was recommended this forum by a friend of mine who is currently in flight school. I've recently spoken with the Marine OSO and was told that I would have to wait until 6 months after I get PRK before I am able to officially start the process. What this means for me is that I have at least 8 months until I can take the ASTB. Which brings me to my question, if you had 8 months to prepare for the test how would you do so?

I have purchased the Barron's book and found the ANIT section to be very helpful, but found the others to be too simplistic. I've been browsing this forum and have downloaded Kyle's guide which I plan to study forwards and backwards. I hope this question isn't too broad as I don't want to junk up this forum. I see this large amount of time I have to study as a blessing and just wonder if anyone has a suggestion as how to best use it.

Thank you

 

[matthew1031]

Hello all, I was recommended this forum by a friend of mine who is currently in flight school. I've recently spoken with the Marine OSO and was told that I would have to wait until 6 months after I get PRK before I am able to officially start the process. What this means for me is that I have at least 8 months until I can take the ASTB. Which brings me to my question, if you had 8 months to prepare for the test how would you do so?

I have purchased the Barron's book and found the ANIT section to be very helpful, but found the others to be too simplistic. I've been browsing this forum and have downloaded Kyle's guide which I plan to study forwards and backwards. I hope this question isn't too broad as I don't want to junk up this forum. I see this large amount of time I have to study as a blessing and just wonder if anyone has a suggestion as how to best use it.

Thank you

I would read a physics textbook for the first 7 months and then do practice tests for the last month.

 

[cblackwell406]

Does anyone know how to make sense of these two diagrams? I don't understand why pulleys of the same size would rotate at different speeds. How is that possible? In the first diagram, if pulley 4 rotates faster than pulley five, wouldn't the belt eventually snap?View attachment 27487
View attachment 27487

For the 1st diagram, the example is asking for the Angular Velocity (w) of the pulleys. The relationship is given by
Velocity (v) = Radius (r) x Angular Velocity (w).
With the velocity being the speed of the belt, this is constant (not changing) throughout the whole system. So dividing by r gives us v/r=w. From this relationship, the smaller the radius (r), the faster the angular velocity of the pulley. Note: Pulley 4 would not spin faster than Pulley 3 and Pulley 5 must be a little bigger than Pulley 4 for the 3rd statement to be true.

For the 2nd Diagram, both statements have to be wrong and here's why. A single belt driven system has same velocity all the way around. If we say that Pulley A has radius = 2, the circumference of the pulley is
2 x (pi) x radius which would be 4(pi). Since Pulley A = B = C, they all have the same circumference and will rotate with exactly the same rotations. Statement 2 is 3 clockwise directions; Pulley B switches to counter-clockwise.

 

[Quackenbush74123]

Hello everyone,
I took my first attempt at the ASTB mid september and am approaching my retest date. I honestly didnt study as much due to work and school, but not that school is over, I can concentrate more on preparing for this test again. I stumbled upon the compass rose scrathc paper trick on youtube. I later read on airwarriors, in this thread specifically, that there is a study guide or flash cards on google drive. Someone before me asked the individual about how to access those study cards, but no reply? Does anyone have a link of some kind that has study cards for the UAV portion of the PBM test?

 

[Quackenbush74123]

I have a question regarding the UAV/parking lot portion of the ASTB. Does the time of your answer or the accuracy of your answer have more of an impact? I read that someone was overly confident with the scratch paper trick using the compass, missed quite a few apparently.

 

[kooljack]

Just took my OAR test today @ BOSTON MEPS. I got a score of 60...all questions were completely out of the blue...never seen them....before. Reading Comp is so boring....I almost fell asleep. Is 60 a good score for positions like cryptologic warfare, Intelligence warfare, Informational Professional positions? Should I take it one more time....or just hold on to it?