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

johnferry

Member
Hey guys. I just took the test for the second time today. For my first attempt, I got a 53 5/5/6 after a week of studying. After another month of studying for my second attempt, I improved to a 58 7/7/8. I got much of my preparation advice from this thread, but I wanted to point out things I did that I haven't seen yet on this thread.

Math: A lot of people recommend Khan Academy. Khan Academy is good, but I mostly used the YouTube channel “The Organic Chemistry Tutor.” The guy explains things really well and provides excellent practice problems with his lessons. I specifically studied for:

  • logarithms (adding, subtracting, change of base formula)
  • matrices (adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing)
  • equations with fractional exponents and radicals (including multiplication with different indexes and radicals in the denominator)
  • perfect numbers (6, 28, 496, 8128)
  • system of equations
  • finding the quantity of a series, finding the sum of that arithmetic series
I also looked at the study guide attached and searched the thread for common word problems people had trouble with.



Reading Comprehension: Read the passages aloud. It’ll help you stay awake.



ANIT: Flash cards. Below are the ones I used:

Comprehensive ANIT

Aviation history

Aircraft Crew/Shirt colors

US Navy Ratings

Naval Aircraft

I also looked up naval aircraft designation numbers on Wikipedia, and this for additional history

DISCLAIMER: I knew all of these flashcards and links (almost) perfectly, and I still only knew about 60-70% of the questions.



UAV: These flashcards. Whenever I saw the arrow pointing in a direction between two headings, I read it like this: NE, ES, SW, WN. The first letter was always the top left corner and the second letter was the top right. If you know these two, you can figure out the other two squares easily since it’s just the opposite side (example: opposite corner of north is south, opposite of west is east, etc.). I hope that made sense.



I didn’t really practice for the stick and throttle part of the test, but my recruiter gave me some good advice: don’t worry about being exactly on target. Just focus on staying behind and mimicking its movements. This took pressure off me and I ended up doing much better.



Everything else I did to prepare can be found on post 4462 and 4531. Just check out the entire thread, it has a bunch of good stuff.



Best of luck everyone!
 

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  • OAR Math Guide 2018.docx
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Wiktoria

Member
Took the OAR for the first time today and scored 57. My recruiter was very happy with that score so I'm guessing I don't need to take it second time. To prepare for the test I only used the materials posted here ( I just went through and solved all the math and mechanics problems available in the study materials). The questions on the test weren't any harder than the ones in the books. I had a lot of probability questions and honestly i had to guess on many of them. The mechanical part really covered basic principles, barely had to calculate anything.
Next step will be MEPS. Unfortunately I have to wait until March due to a recent c-section :D
My background is: 3.07 GPA in Business Administration, several years of admin work experience and two years enlisted in the Air Force.
 

Scimitarze

Automated Member
Howdy guys, just got back home from taking my ASTB in Austin. Despite fighting off allergy attacks all day yesterday and this morning, on top of screwing up the UAV portion something fierce, I was able to get a 57 7/6/6 on the first shot. I can't emphasize enough how much the posts in this thread and on the forum helped, and hopefully can help others preparing for the test as well. For background, I'm an International Politics Major/German Minor, but was a Chemistry major in Freshmen year, so it was more of relearning the math instead of learning it from new. Cumulative GPA should end up around a 3.8 by the time I graduate next semester.

In general, I was extremely lucky to have the test admin have a separate room for OAR/ASTB testers. I spent this morning trying to frantically find my package of orange soft earplugs, but they were unfortunately relocated without my knowledge. Going off of other write ups, it seems that the testing rooms can vary greatly between locations and I would definitely bring a pair just in case. Secondly, all of the posters that say you will do worse when stressed/anxious are absolutely right, if you are a heavy coffee drinker like I am, I recommend what @wangj231 did and keep the pretest caffeine to a minimum. I was a tad groggier than usual, but I'm glad I didn't try to comp that with more caffeine as my heart had no problems getting up there during the UAV and PBM portions. Anyways, here's how the sections broke down for me:

Math:

Started with an easy multiply a mixed number by a fraction word problem, but was soon given a complicated multi-step test average problem that I had to go back and correct myself a few different times on. Later on, only had an easy log question and then back to the word problems. Some of these included a multi-leg Distance/Rate/Time problem, and another one was equalizing two company rates (I had to guess on this one). Other than that, some outliers included a question asking me which function graph would be symmetrical along the origin (I picked y=x^2, it's been way too long since pre-cal for me) and one asking me about an infinite fraction series and its sum of 1.

Honestly, I was pretty down doing this part since I made more than a few mistakes leading to me draining time, eventually running out of time before being rolled into the reading section.

Reading:

Being a polisci equivalent, I've spent the last few years digesting extremely dry material, so studying for this section wasn't a big priority for me. I will say though that reminding yourself not to make assumptions and to only use the information in the passage (either a two sentence snippet or a whole paragraph over Navy regs) will stop your mind from wandering and second guessing yourself. I got booted out with 3 minutes remaining in this section.

Mech:

Honestly, this section is either you know it or you don't. My first few questions were simple things you can find in the flashcards, but after those I started getting questions that for example would've required converting to raw newtons. No long formulas and wordplay though, which kind of put me at ease (there was a resistance Q where it had me calculate the voltage giving me current and resistance though). I got kicked out of here with around 3 minutes left.

ANIT:

Another "you know it or you don't" section, so don't spend time dwelling on a question that you are trying to break down really hard. Reading the FAA handbook really helped me for this section and I can't recommend it enough since it breaks down concepts that might appear in this section. However, there was also a lot that I didn't know, even from going through the multiple guides found here. One example was asking me which war LtCmdr. Iforgothisname had his "extensive and highly complicated" dogfight in. One question over transponder codes was also on there, as well as a question about what would be affected if the pitot tube was blocked. I was booted out again with around 3 minutes to spare.

Personality:

This part will suck plain and simple. The only good thing about this is that the ASTB told me to stop being a pushover after throwing "Nobody listens to what you say" and "You are forgotten about in large groups" at over and over for more times than I can count.

UAV:

Went into this confident and came out of it feeling unsure and somewhat disappointed in myself. If you have test anxiety, it will come out on this part. I got really good at practicing the flashcards without the compass trick and decided to go ahead without it. Needless to say, I should've done it anyways. As stated above and all over this thread, this is a major portion of your performance scores, but I'm honestly surprised I was able to slide out a 6/6 on my SNA/SNFO scores with as many mistakes I made and how slow I sometimes was. I think it's also good to know that the test version and flashcard versions are a bit different in looks. The flashcards on here are less "noisy" and simple, while the test version has some shitty tent and polygon parking lots that looked like they were ripped from the files of a Sega Saturn game. To make things even more fun, you get shown your time it took to answer the question right or wrong, which can feed into some anxiety. With that being said: STAY CALM ON THIS PART. The most mistakes I made were when I was freaking out and started panicking. If I were to do it again (which I might) I would definitely take my time (not too much though) and confirm my visualizations with the compass trick.

PBM:

I'm not going to lie, other than the first dichotic listening part, I actually enjoyed myself and had fun on this part. For the listening, once again staying calm is key and I also recommend leaning as it reminded myself which side I was supposed to be listening for after a string. Also, I kept repeating "Odd Even" in my head while fingering the controls to make sure that I wouldn't forget which side is which. After the listening, you go into chasing the plane up and down with the throttle stick. There was a HUGE deadzone in my throttle that I can only assume is part of the test, as when I calibrated the throttle before the PBM, it was nice and snappy. A trick I used is to always keep moving the throttle in little increments in and out of the dead zone. The little plane that you're chasing too is a snappy little asshole so don't be afraid to really go for it sometimes, which is also seen in the joystick exercise next as well. The joystick had a deadzone, but not one nearly as bad as the throttle. Even though the last time I picked up a flight simulator was 10 years ago, my time bumming around arcades seemed to help me "get it" faster when it came to inverted controls. Putting them together was a shitshow, but a fun shitshow. With listening added, my order of priority was:

1. Listening
2. 2D Plane
3. 1D Plane, focusing mostly on listening and 2D, only catching the 1D Plane in my peripheral, since the color scheme is green, red, and yellow on solid black, which is pretty easy on the eyes. Coming finally to emergency situations, I didn't have to do this with listening, so I actually found it easier than the section before. I wrote down the procedures in big letters and positioned the scratch paper upright so I could look at it without turning my head. My dials were on the throttle stick (Saitek X52 btw), but I don't know if the stick and throttle can vary between testing centers. With fire and engine, it's either all the way up or all the way down, so I just spun the dials until they stopped moving and hit the clutch. Prop has you do 50% one dial and the other dial set to full, but the yellow middle margin is pretty forgiving so I wouldn't worry about accidentally overshooting the dial. However, be sure to "wake up" your dials. My first emergency had my dials already in the right spot so I had to move them down and up again to make the computer realize that I had it right, so make sure the lights on the gauges are lighting up before you hit the clutch.

All in all while I didn't get the best score and will probably have to retake it in the future, I'm pretty happy with my first shot. Here's some drive links below that I got from previous users in this thread that I mainly studied:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qHP7UgdlcG_8MWka5XnTuNGl4Q-hqL3b?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zCfQ7iTsFBRKJzH8shh2gs7SK15cv2sM?usp=sharing

Now off to get a beer and google the right person to shoot laser beams into my eyes. :D
 
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matt_c

Member
Took the OAR for a second time today. Score increased drastically and went from a 32 to a 51. Lots of hours studying, but I will say that I have seen a lot of people recommend the Barron’s book and I will agree that it’s a good one to use.

Math section was pretty expected. Lots of word problems and fractions.

Reading section was super dry. Lots of questions about Navy regulations. I would recommend reading the passage multiple times and then reading the options and then comparing them.

Mechanical was surprisingly 99% questions and only about 2 questions pertaining to force and tension related images.

I feel pretty comfortable with my package so far. 3 LORs from Admirals, 1 Captain and one LCDR. 5 years prior enlisted in naval aviation with Executive branch experience and aerospace and defense experience. 2.8 GPA and graduating in May.
 

Jacob1792

Well-Known Member
Took the ASTB a couple days ago. Background: 26, MIS major, 3.10 GPA, Prior enlisted Airman, Pilot and NFO age waiver. I honestly felt underprepared going into it; I work full time, go to school full time, and drill for the AirNG once a month. However, I studied the crap out of these flashcards which were a huge help for the ANIT, and I also worked through the math problem document that Jacob's (the 9/9/9 guy) post linked to which was also a great refresher.

For the math section, I didn't really get anything that I thought was too difficult so I was kind of worried, knowing that the test is adaptive. I never got kicked out of the test and I actually ran out of time. Most of the questions that I remember had to do with solving for x, and there was one about the odds of getting a heart from a shuffled deck. Also, there were a couple questions about finding the last two test scores, knowing the final average and the other test scores. Another one was finding the missing angle of an acute triangle where the other two angles are like (3x-1) and the missing angle's supplementary angle was 4x. Another one had to do with a barn's size based on its shadow knowing a man's height and the shadow's height.

Reading: Went into this confident. I'm a reader, after all..Wow, incredibly boring and they do a great job trying to trick you. Also ran out of time on this one. All the aforementioned tips are correct. Only one answer is fully supported by the paragraph, so pay attention. I was pretty drained when this portion started and the questions also seemed to alternate between easy and hard which had me confused.

Mechanical: I have practically no background in mechanics. I also barely studied for this section which was stupid, and I honestly had to give my best educated guess on almost every problem. I had a questions like: At the same time, a bullet is fired from a gun and a bullet is dropped from the same height. Which will reach the ground faster? I said the gun bullet. Some other ones: where is the kinetic enegy greater, trying to find the mass of a toy car that is pushed with the force of 4 somethings and travels 2 m/s^2(I guessed 2kg), which ball would reach the ground faster if one was dropped and one was tossed into the air(guessed the tossed ball). No gear, pulley, etc questions.


NATFI: awful. You don't take the NATFI, the NATFI takes you.

UAV: Definitely use the flashcards linked in this thread. The practice session was helpful, but I was somewhat nervous on this portion and missed 3 because I was trying to go to fast. One of those errors was because I clicked a box I didn't mean to, so try and remain calm during this section. I ranged from 1.X seconds to 5.

Dichotic listening: Not terrible. Lean into the ear your supposed to be listening to. I got a couple wrong because I pressed the wrong button trying to be extremely quick.

Vertical tracking: Not very hard at all. It tries to shake you but when you're only focusing on it, it's not difficult.

Aircraft tracking: Not very easy. I switched all my gaming to inverted Y axis and it was a MASSIVE help. I can't even play games with a normal Y axis anymore, I'm ruined.

Both at the same time: I felt like a hot mess. I can't give any tips here, I basically just tried to get in the zone and do the damn thing.

Both with listening: My favorite part, because the listening distracted me from how poorly I thought I was doing.

Emergency Procedures: I wrote them down, and I recommend you do as well, but they were so simple I didn't reference the sheet. The first emergency I forgot to press the clutch to reset for a few seconds, but the next two went well.

When this was all over I saw my scores: 57 6/7/7. Not the greatest, but I literally did a jumping fist pump on my way to the door(I was the only examinee). My recruiter seemed pretty happy with them too. I was disqualified from pilot at the NAMI because my eyesight was just poor enough so I'll probably only apply for NFO since I'm iffy about LASIK.

Well done, bud. Glad to see that my post is still useful after all this time. Based on scores in recent OCS classes I think you have a good shot at NFO. Best of luck!
 
Hello,

I did my astb retake today (2nd attempt). Scored a 51 6/6/6. I used the study guides presented as well as the MATLAB PBM simulator, i know the acores arent amazing but i would love to know where that really stands as far as competitiveness.

Thank you.
 

Rahul Gupta

Active Member
Hello,

I did my astb retake today (2nd attempt). Scored a 51 6/6/6. I used the study guides presented as well as the MATLAB PBM simulator, i know the acores arent amazing but i would love to know where that really stands as far as competitiveness.

Thank you.
Not bad, especially for your first time! Those are good scores, however, I want you to ask yourself if you would feel that you can do a little better the 2nd time around. If the answer is yes, then take it again and if not then live with em'. If you look on page 306, you'll see that you have fairly identical scores to me (just a tad bit higher on the OAR for you - I got a 6/6/6 46). So you can look at it like this, (a) your odds, someone correct me if I am wrong, of scoring higher is more likely than you scoring lower the second time since you can only improve from here (unless you were at like all 7's or 8's then its very hard to make that upward improvement) (b) You have solid scores for Navy and, if u were to go to USMC, assuming you can crush the PT exam (as expected of every Marine) you're practically a pilot for them.

All in all, you have good scores and are in a fairly similar predicament as myself. Personally, I am using the 5 weeks I have to prepare from everything off of this forum along with an order of the ARCO GRE Math book 6th edition along with revision from my old study sources (listed on pg. 306 of this forum) to take my second stab at this test. It's up to you in the end, but I say, why not give it a second shot since the odds of improving are in your favor (again, someone correct me if I am wrong here).
 

Rahul Gupta

Active Member
Can someone please explain the logic of this MCT question, I can't rest until I get it. Personally I disagree with the "correct" answer, maybe one of you on here might be able to explain. Here's my logic: All the valves are closed initially, thus, opening valve 7 will allow air to flow directly into G then opening valve 3 will allow air to go directly into S, now here's the issue, my logic also dictates that opening valve 4 will allow air to go into M. Thus, I get B. However, the correct answer is D (opening valves 7,3,5) which I'm sure is a typo error at this point unless someone here can kindly explain to me the logic? (Image attached below along with link to book - pg. 65 in book and on pdf it's pg. 75/456). There's also been a correction to the image which I've also attached below, thanks in advance!

http://www.nelnetsolutions.com/pdf/free/mastermilitaryflight.pdf
 

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FormerRecruitingGuru

Making Recruiting Great Again
Can someone please explain the logic of this MCT question, I can't rest until I get it. Personally I disagree with the "correct" answer, maybe one of you on here might be able to explain. Here's my logic: All the valves are closed initially, thus, opening valve 7 will allow air to flow directly into G then opening valve 3 will allow air to go directly into S, now here's the issue, my logic also dictates that opening valve 4 will allow air to go into M. However, the correct answer is D (opening valves 7,3,5) which I'm sure is a typo error at this point unless someone here can kindly explain to me the logic? (Image attached below along with link to book - pg. 65 in book and on pdf it's pg. 75/456). There's also been a correction to the image which I've also attached below, thanks in advance!

http://www.nelnetsolutions.com/pdf/free/mastermilitaryflight.pdf

Dude, it’s Christmas (eve). Relax.
 

PhlyHigh94

Well-Known Member
Can someone please explain the logic of this MCT question, I can't rest until I get it. Personally I disagree with the "correct" answer, maybe one of you on here might be able to explain. Here's my logic: All the valves are closed initially, thus, opening valve 7 will allow air to flow directly into G then opening valve 3 will allow air to go directly into S, now here's the issue, my logic also dictates that opening valve 4 will allow air to go into M. Thus, I get B. However, the correct answer is D (opening valves 7,3,5) which I'm sure is a typo error at this point unless someone here can kindly explain to me the logic? (Image attached below along with link to book - pg. 65 in book and on pdf it's pg. 75/456). There's also been a correction to the image which I've also attached below, thanks in advance!

http://www.nelnetsolutions.com/pdf/free/mastermilitaryflight.pdf
I think it's either of them. 7,3,5 and 7,3,4. Again, Navy tests are not perfect.
 

PhlyHigh94

Well-Known Member
Hey guys. I just took the test for the second time today. For my first attempt, I got a 53 5/5/6 after a week of studying. After another month of studying for my second attempt, I improved to a 58 7/7/8. I got much of my preparation advice from this thread, but I wanted to point out things I did that I haven't seen yet on this thread.

Math: A lot of people recommend Khan Academy. Khan Academy is good, but I mostly used the YouTube channel “The Organic Chemistry Tutor.” The guy explains things really well and provides excellent practice problems with his lessons. I specifically studied for:

  • logarithms (adding, subtracting, change of base formula)
  • matrices (adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing)
  • equations with fractional exponents and radicals (including multiplication with different indexes and radicals in the denominator)
  • perfect numbers (6, 28, 496, 8128)
  • system of equations
  • finding the quantity of a series, finding the sum of that arithmetic series
I also looked at the study guide attached and searched the thread for common word problems people had trouble with.



Reading Comprehension: Read the passages aloud. It’ll help you stay awake.



ANIT: Flash cards. Below are the ones I used:

Comprehensive ANIT

Aviation history

Aircraft Crew/Shirt colors

US Navy Ratings

Naval Aircraft

I also looked up naval aircraft designation numbers on Wikipedia, and this for additional history

DISCLAIMER: I knew all of these flashcards and links (almost) perfectly, and I still only knew about 60-70% of the questions.



UAV: These flashcards. Whenever I saw the arrow pointing in a direction between two headings, I read it like this: NE, ES, SW, WN. The first letter was always the top left corner and the second letter was the top right. If you know these two, you can figure out the other two squares easily since it’s just the opposite side (example: opposite corner of north is south, opposite of west is east, etc.). I hope that made sense.



I didn’t really practice for the stick and throttle part of the test, but my recruiter gave me some good advice: don’t worry about being exactly on target. Just focus on staying behind and mimicking its movements. This took pressure off me and I ended up doing much better.



Everything else I did to prepare can be found on post 4462 and 4531. Just check out the entire thread, it has a bunch of good stuff.



Best of luck everyone!
Can you please post video links for Organic Chemistry that specifically includes those math topics. I watch him too but he's got so many videos with similar titles that I don't know which ones to watch that touch on those topics. Merry Chrithmith.
 
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