ASTB-E/APEX 4 Experience -DEC 2013

[RockNrolling]

Thanks for the quick response Rock. This is exactly the type of info I was looking for. Congratz on the great ASTB score

Thanks! Good luck next week and don't stress. Just keep studying and do your best. Two areas I wish I had studied more were fractional exponents and matrix multiplication for the math. I think I got a couple questions related to those wrong.
If you get the chance, let us know how you did afterwards.

 

[Sundevil106150]

The questions if you look at all the study guides are not hard at all (to an extent). I am not saying that to be an ass or cocky but the point of the testing is to see how well your logic is. Each math problem when you go through it takes only about 30 seconds-45 seconds, especially the LOG problems if you know the three basic rules for Logs. They know that you are under a time constraint so they are not going to give you a problem that takes 2-5 minutes to solve. If you are spending that much time on the problem, my tutor says just make an educated guess. Most of these problems you are able to automatically get rid of two of the possibly answers off the bat if you think it through enough. The test is to see how your deductive reasoning/logic/ and quick problem solving ability is. The only difficulty is that we have not taken any of this shit since high school. Right know I am two months into studying and have a tutor who has a PHD in Bio- Chemistry, runs a a lab for a huge company, taught students to take the MCATS (he scored a 33/36 on it), is incredibly bright in math, and is overall a very bright and incredibly intelligent individual so I got lucky that he was willing to help me out on studying and making practice tests for me. I plan on taking the test in early June right before the June 18th board. One of my main questions is on the Mechanics section of the test. Do you have to remember any formulas or specific theories? In addition, can anyone go into detail on what type of electrical questions they ask, and someone mentioned pendulum question as well. I have the Barrons, For Dummies, ASTB-E 2nd edition, and the Peterson 8th edition. My overall plan/hope is to get into OCS as an aviator. Also, for the new ASTB-E can you still take the test in 2 sections on different dates or is it all at once now? One last thing, anyone know any good books to help with the aviation portion of the test, history, parts of ship, etc.? Your response and help would be much appreciated.

 

[TheSolution1]

Hello Air Warriors,

I took the ASTB-E today up at NRD Saint Louis and scored a 51/5/6/5. Not really the scores I wanted and I thought I was going to have to re-take but according to my OSO this is good enough and he thinks I have a good shot at getting picked up. Apparently their is a pilot shortage on the horizon and the Navy needs pilots (can anyone confirm this?) ... So I guess I just kind of lucked out with my timing. I wanted to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread it helped me a ton. Also if anyone has any questions regarding the test just send me a message. I will probably write a longer post this weekend about each section of the test when I have time.

 

[FormerRecruitingGuru]

Hello Air Warriors,

I took the ASTB-E today up at NRD Saint Louis and scored a 51/5/6/5. Not really the scores I wanted and I thought I was going to have to re-take but according to my OSO this is good enough and he thinks I have a good shot at getting picked up. Apparently their is a pilot shortage on the horizon and the Navy needs pilots (can anyone confirm this?) ... So I guess I just kind of lucked out with my timing. I wanted to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread it helped me a ton. Also if anyone has any questions regarding the test just send me a message. I will probably write a longer post this weekend about each section of the test when I have time.

Assuming your GPA is a 3.0 or higher submit your kit with those ASTB scores. You should be fine.

 

[FormerRecruitingGuru]

Took the OAR a few minutes ago, so I'm going to try and get this down fresh in a sort of stream of consciousness style, then edit it later.


Math

Rough. Lots of complicated time consuming equations, some direct (e.g. (-4) - [-4(5-2)(-3) {-3[(9)(4)] -4}] ) and some built into word problems. It wasn't so much difficult in a lot of ways as much as it was frustrating. I felt like I was eating a big time crunch because a lot of the questions seemed to take a long time (and were not easy to reverse engineer with the available answers). It cut me off four minutes early.


Reading

Much harder than I had expected. I read something like 6,000 pages of material a week and have never struggled with reading comprehension, but I had trouble with parts of this. As other have said many questions seemed lifted from regulation books, and many answers were right but not perfectly accurate. It took a fair bit of rereading to confirm which fit and which did not fit, and even then I felt like there were a couple possible answers that really were dependent on how you read a single world. One in particular that jumped out surrounded child /spouse abuse and how preventing it (because it hurts readiness and moral) was the responsibility of commanding officers. One answer choice included something about how "officers shall prevent child / spouse abuse". A lot of that answer felt right, but shall suggest to me that it was an absolute, and I went another direction on it. I ran out of time here.


Physics

I felt like I got smeared across the pavement on this one. I'd focused my study around formulas for pulleys and leavers, circuits, electricity, leavers, edges, pendulums, and so forth, but neglected conversion rates for forms of energy and paid for it badly. There were at least four or five questions that proposed a question in weights but asked for answers in energy that I completely guessed on.


I ate a couple gear questions (which moves fastest if they are all different sizes), but nothing on leavers and very few on electrical matters. No current and no voltage questions. No device identification or anything like that. Nothing on heat exchange. One question on atmospheric pressure. No questions on convection or conduction. One two stroke engine question I guessed on.

You only get 15 minutes for this section (or I only got 15 minutes), but I finished well before that. For most of these questions you will know the answer or you won't, there isn't a whole lot of work involved.


I ended up with an OAR score of 59, which was a little disappointing to me.


I felt like if I had taken the time study a little more (I put in maybe six hours in the two weeks before I took the test) I could have done much better, especially on the physics and math sections (which I haven’t looked at in four or five years).

Dude, any OAR score about a 50 is considered competitive. A 59 is a good score. I'd keep that.

 

[TheSolution1]

Assuming your GPA is a 3.0 or higher submit your kit with those ASTB scores. You should be fine.

2.9 GPA...My recruiter said it is good enough and that I should get picked up. I'm still a bit pessimistic about my chances though. Compared to everyone else in this thread my scores are terrible. Maybe this community is just a very bright minority of applicants. I have no idea what the average score is for most applicants.

 

[FormerRecruitingGuru]

I had an applicant with a 2.7 with similar scores get selected. Get your kit done so you can submit to the next rolling boards (sometime in May or sooner). Roll the dice baby!

 

[BusyBee604]

8/8/8 61 Took the test Tuesday the 25th of Feb in Memphis at a Navy recruiting center. What Nate has said is very accurate. The joysticks kind of suck and its meant to be hard, I think more than anything they are looking for improvement and your ability to handle stress.

Get used to 'joysticks', most of you will find them second nature soon after starting the flight stage.

I took the ASTB again today and, thanks to all of the great gouge here, I got a 7/7/8 64. I'm really grateful to all of you.

Stressful... probably, but appears that you both adapted nicely, and handled the stress well. Both of you, nice scores!

You will soon realize that when you fly aircraft for any length of time, you will occasionally be faced with [suddenly] stressful situations. In the rare serious emergency situation, keeping your cool under stress is essential to a positive outcome for you, crew/pax, and your aircraft.
BzB

 

[RockNrolling]

2.9 GPA...My recruiter said it is good enough and that I should get picked up. I'm still a bit pessimistic about my chances though. Compared to everyone else in this thread my scores are terrible. Maybe this community is just a very bright minority of applicants. I have no idea what the average score is for most applicants.

Hey man, I just wanted to say good job and don't be down on yourself. Good on you for coming back and letting us know how you did. I would listen to your OSO and submit your package; he knows you better than we do. ASTB scores definitely aren't the only factor in a successful package. Try submitting and see what happens. Hopefully you'll be surprised and get selected. Good luck!

 

[Notorious Nate]

Joysticks are great, and I have a good bit of time in aircraft and sims using sticks, but the graphical display on the test doesn't represent an aircraft flight patter very well in my opinion. In my opinion, the display and the stick axis just didn't go together well.

Get used to 'joysticks', most of you will find them second nature soon after starting the flight stage.

 

[EMTpilot]

A pro tip for anyone taking the ASTB. Track the 2D moving "joystick" airplane with your focused vision and use your peripheral vision to track the up/down throttle airplane. The test will tell you to spread your attention evenly among all the tasks. That is a trap. Spread your attention where it is needed. Most of my attention went to the 2D moving plane, then the listening, then the 1D moving plane. Best of luck everyone. You'll do great.

 

[DDE1990]

Just took the new OAR portion yesterday. I had previously gotten a 53 on the old test after about 2 weeks of studying. I only got a few days in this time and got a 57.

Math seemed quite a bit harder, reading was certainly harder, and mechanical seemed very, very basic. I was thrown by the reading section the most, which really caught me off guard. I scored near 700 on the reading section of the SAT multiple times back in the day, and did well on the LSAT's (which have notoriously difficult reading comprehension problems) and some of the new reading questions were quite tough. They aren't actually questions, but rather very dense paragraphs followed by 5 statements regarding the paragraph, usually 3-4 of which seem reasonable until inspected really closely. I'm not sure how people can study this, outside of reading the manuals for all the electronics in your house and attempting to find them interesting.

Here's hoping a 4 point bump is what puts me over the top for resubmission.

 

[exNavyOffRec]

Just took the new OAR portion yesterday. I had previously gotten a 53 on the old test after about 2 weeks of studying. I only got a few days in this time and got a 57.

Math seemed quite a bit harder, reading was certainly harder, and mechanical seemed very, very basic. I was thrown by the reading section the most, which really caught me off guard. I scored near 700 on the reading section of the SAT multiple times back in the day, and did well on the LSAT's (which have notoriously difficult reading comprehension problems) and some of the new reading questions were quite tough. They aren't actually questions, but rather very dense paragraphs followed by 5 statements regarding the paragraph, usually 3-4 of which seem reasonable until inspected really closely. I'm not sure how people can study this, outside of reading the manuals for all the electronics in your house and attempting to find them interesting.

Here's hoping a 4 point bump is what puts me over the top for resubmission.

It will allow you to reapply but what the board will be looking for is what have you done professionally (ie what is different on your "resume") to make yourself a better candidate, they really don't care much about the OAR.

 

[DDE1990]

It will allow you to reapply but what the board will be looking for is what have you done professionally (ie what is different on your "resume") to make yourself a better candidate, they really don't care much about the OAR.

Understood. Riddle me this... How much impact would having work experience with a company that requires a privately issued security clearance have on an applicant's package? Also, I recently obtained a TS/SCI-eligible clearance via an SSBI... how much impact might that have?

 

[exNavyOffRec]

Understood. Riddle me this... How much impact would having work experience with a company that requires a privately issued security clearance have on an applicant's package? Also, I recently obtained a TS/SCI-eligible clearance via an SSBI... how much impact might that have?

not much, based on the application process everyone that goes in front of them should be able to obtain that clearance.

If you meet the age requirement I would recommend trying for SWO unless something precludes you from applying.