Gotem_coach007
Member
OAR tomorrow morning... Should be interesting... Thanks again for the gouge.
Hi everyone, I am just looking for some advice & feedback. I am currently a Midshipman in the NROTC program, Navy option, striving to be a Naval Aviator.
I've taken the ASTB once so far. I scored a 6-7-7. I simply want to know if I should retake the ASTB or not. I think my biggest challenge was the Math portion of the exam. I've received mixed feedback on my question, "Should I take the ASTB again?" Some say yes, others say no (officers and people who have been selected as Student Naval Aviators). I know guys who have gotten accepted with lower scores than my own. However, my gut tells me to take it again because I think I can do better, and my goal is straight 8s (the "shoe-in" score, from what I've heard)
When looking at my overall package, this is what I'm working with:
ASTB: 6-7-7
GPA: 3.0 cumulative in a Tier 1, technical engineering major (Systems Engineering), with a couple very low semester GPAs and some high ones.
PFA score: 300
Leadership in NROTC: Strong
I still have time to retake the test, but not much. I service select in October, and can take my ASTB again anytime (I've already gone 90 days since my last exam). My package needs to be finalized in August, giving me ample time to take the test two more times before the deadline if need be. Any feedback is highly appreciated. Thank you!
I scored a OAR:77 9/9/8.
Congrats dude, ASTB high score master race. You sure the mechanical section didn't start throwing you relativity questions at the end? I got a couple dealing with electrons at the speed of light and cathode ray tubes. Interesting you missed 4 UAV questions, what was your average response time?
I took the OAR this morning and got a 59. (I’m applying for Intel). I was aiming for a 60. During the test I felt like I was not doing well and was surprised I still got a 59. The clock never ran out, the sections just suddenly stopped. I guess I answered enough for the program to decide a score for the section. It’s an adaptive test, so there’s no going back once a question is answered. I only got one or two advanced math questions, no logarithms or anything like that. My math didn’t always add up, but I think I was close enough to accurately guess the right answer a few times. The verbal section started out with hard long paragraphs about navy offices and programs doing x, y, z for this and that purpose. After several of those I started getting easy ones about butterfly migration where the answer was pretty obviously stated in the paragraph. It lowered my confidence a bit, but after each one of those I got something hard again. Mechanics I did more guessing than I thought I would. If I took it again I think I could do a lot better, knowing what to expect now, but the recruiter said I had a good score. He also said that in the past everyone he’s had with that kind of score and a master’s degree has been picked up
I’ll give a bit of a breakdown of the sections and then list what I studied and gleaned from this site.
Math: The clock started at 40 minutes but the section ended after about 25 min. All numbers are real numbers. The questions were mostly word problems. 1 question on probability of a die roll. If a rectangle has perimeter of 80x and has a base 7 times the height what is the area. Two people are painting a house-one can paint a house in 4 hours, one in 6, how long does it take to do it together. If sally gets scores 73, 85, 93, the 4th score is 20 points less than 5th score which is 2/3 of the average of the first three what must she score on the 6th and 7th test to average an 85, the numbers didn’t break down cleanly, some rounding was required within the steps, I wasn’t expecting that. There were a few questions along the lines of Joe goes 25mph for 20 min, 65mph for 12 min and 45mph for 15 min, how far did Joe go? Reducing the minutes into fractions of an hour multiplied by the mph produced the answer. My hardest question was: a war starts in year x^2 and ends in the year (x+1)^2, the war lasted 29 years, what year did it start? The answers were whole numbers, no fractions. I still can’t get an answer that doesn’t have a fraction. There was a question along the lines of a jet goes 384 mph for 900 seconds, how far did it go.
Reading: The clock started at 30 minutes and I think went for about 25 min. I think it helped once I started reading the paragraph twice before going over the questions.
Mechanical
I didn’t get many questions on what I studied the most, pulleys and levers. There were only one or two questions on that. One showed a picture with a load hanging from two strands of springs, two springs on each strand. It asked what the load was on one spring. I got a questions asking about a stick being inserted or withdrawn and adding or removing electrons or neutrons to speed up a reactor. AC power is from chemical change or coil of copper around a magnet. Acceleration of a rock comparing dropping or throwing the rock down a well, a circuit diagram asking which bulbs would light up. What is the role of water in a power plant. Air is flowing over a wing which direction is force exerted. I guessed right: here’s an image to help: http://www.cap-ny153.org/Bernoulli Wing Lift.gif Force equals… and then it gave different options. If the flywheel of a space probe turns clockwise does the rest of the probe turn the same direction, not at all, the opposite direction? I guessed the opposite way, not sure what a flywheel does on a space probe.
Overall assessment of the test: Learn the basic stuff really well. I spent too much time trying to study advanced algebra, even wasted time on trig. Functions never came up, other people mentioned logarithms, so maybe still study them. I put some time into that; however, if you know exponents it is easy to learn. Still study exponents. I had one question on that. You can get a decent score without acing super hard questions.
I used Khan Academy extensively. I studied for about two months. The official website with information on the OAR includes a link to a sample test with a few questions rated by difficulty. I did a practice test in Barron’s Military Flight Aptitude Tests (copyright 2014). I was disappointed because I thought the questions in the test were too easy, but it turned out to be pretty accurate for the types of questions. I got everything from the library except for Accepted INC OAR study guide, it’s super thin. At best it gives you a bit of a warm up on math, but you need more. The reading section has large paragraphs, not at all like the test. The mechanical section gives a basic over view of Newton’s laws, Force, torque, friction, energy, power, levers, simple machines. All good things to learn but those only represents about 25% of what the test covered. I never found a good guide for studying for the physics section. It’s a physics section, not just mechanics. Early on I focused too narrowly. I crammed a bit on circuits at the end, but no need to study anything too complicated on that. Maybe somebody else on here can give a better contribution on how to study for this part. Learning Express’ Military Flight Aptitude Tests 3rd edition had some practice test, but the answer sheet had quite a few mistakes in it, the test also had conflicting diagrams with questions.
Attached is a rough copy and pasting of the last 30 pages or so on this forum (dating from a few weeks ago) with all the clues people wrote about what’s on the test along with their advice.