ASVAB For Dummies

Part I

Making Sense of the ASVAB

In this part . . .

An ancient military proverb goes something like this: Understand your enemy, and you will avoid getting shot in the buttocks. Okay, that’s not a real ancient military proverb. (In fact, I just made it up.) The point is that understanding how the ASVAB is organized, how it’s scored, and what those scores mean to you and your potential military career can help you study for this nine-part test more efficiently.

Even if you can’t control yourself and you want to jump right in by reviewing the principles of algebra and memorizing word lists, chill out and take a few minutes to read through Part I. This part gives you an overview of the ASVAB, describes what each part of the exam tests, tells you when and where to take the test, and fills you in on how the scores are calculated. I even throw in some proven study techniques and test-taking strategies at no extra cost.

Chapter 1

Putting the ASVAB under a Microscope

In This Chapter

Checking out the different versions of the ASVAB

Figuring out what each subtest covers

Computing the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) score

Taking the ASVAB again

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) consists of nine individual tests (ten for Navy applicants who test at a Military Entrance Processing Station, or MEPS) that cover subjects ranging from general science principles to vocabulary. Your ASVAB test results determine whether you qualify for military service and, if so, which jobs you qualify for. The ASVAB isn’t an IQ test. The military isn’t trying to figure out how smart you are. The ASVAB specifically measures your ability to be trained to do a specific job.

The famous Chinese general Sun Tzu said, Know your enemy. To develop an effective plan of study and score well on the ASVAB, it’s important to understand how the ASVAB is organized and how the military uses the scores from the subtests. This chapter describes the different versions of the ASVAB, the organization of the subtests, how the AFQT score is calculated, and the various service policies for retaking the ASVAB.

Knowing Which Version You’re Taking

The ASVAB comes in many flavors, depending on where and why you take it. You’d think that after more than 25 years in existence, the test could’ve been whittled down to a single version by now. But don’t get too confused about the different versions. Table 1-1 boils down the choices.

For people taking the enlistment version of the test, the vast majority of applicants are processed through a MEPS, where they take the computerized format of the ASVAB (called the CAT-ASVAB, short for computerized-adaptive testing ASVAB), undergo a medical physical, and run through a security screening, many times all in one trip. However, applicants may instead choose to take the paper and pencil (P&P) version, which is generally given by non-MEPS personnel at numerous Mobile Examination Test (MET) sites located throughout the United States.

Mapping Out the ASVAB Subtests

The computerized format of the ASVAB contains ten separately timed subtests, with the Auto & Shop Information subtest split in two (also, one small subtest is geared to Coding Speed for a few Navy jobs; I don’t include this subtest in the practice tests in this book because very few people test for these jobs). The paper format of the test has nine subtests. The two formats differ in the number of questions in each subtest and the amount of time you have for each one. Table 1-2 outlines the ASVAB subtests in the order that you take them in the enlistment (computerized or paper) and student (paper only) versions of the test; you can also see which chapters to turn to when you want to review that content.

*The Assembling Objects subtest isn’t part of the student version of the test.

Deciphering ASVAB Scores

The Department of Defense is an official U.S. Government agency, so (of course) it can’t keep things simple. When you receive your ASVAB score results, you don’t see just one score; you see several. Figure 1-1 shows an example of an ASVAB score card used by high school guidance counselors (for people who take the student version — see Knowing Which Version You’re Taking for details).

Figure 1-1: A sample ASVAB score card used by high school guidance counselors.

Figure 1-2 depicts an example of an ASVAB score card used for military enlistment purposes.

So what do all these different scores actually mean? Check out the following sections to find out.

Defining all the scores

When you take a test in high school, you usually receive a score that’s pretty easy to understand — A, B, C, D, or F. (If you do really well, the teacher may even draw a smiley face on the top of the page.) If only your ASVAB scores were as easy to understand.

In the following list, you see how your ASVAB test scores result in several different kinds of scores:

Raw score: This score is the total number of points you receive on each subtest of the ASVAB. Although you don’t see your raw scores on the ASVAB score cards, they’re used to calculate the other scores.

warning_bomb.eps You can’t use the practice tests in this book (or any other ASVAB study guide) to calculate your probable ASVAB score. ASVAB scores are calculated by using raw scores, and raw scores aren’t determined simply from the number of right or wrong answers. On the actual ASVAB, harder math questions are worth more points than easier questions.

Figure 1-2: A sample ASVAB score card used for military enlistment purposes.

Standard scores: The various subtests of the ASVAB are reported on the score cards as standard scores. A standard score is calculated by converting your raw score based on a standard distribution of scores with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10.

remember.eps Don’t confuse a standard score with the graded-on-a-curve score you may have seen on school tests — where the scores range from 1 to 100 with the majority of students scoring between 70 and 100. With standard scores, the majority score is between 30 and 70. That means that a standard score of 50 is an average score and that a score of 60 is an above-average score.

Percentile scores: These scores range from 1 to 99. They express how well you did in comparison with another group called the norm. On the student version’s score card, the norm is fellow students in your same grade (except for the AFQT score).

On the enlistment and student versions’ score cards, the AFQT score is presented as a percentile with the score normed using the 1997 Profile of American Youth, a national probability sample of 18- to 23-year-olds who took the ASVAB in 1997. For example, if you receive a percentile score of 72, you can say you scored as well as or better than 72 out of 100 of the norm group who took the test. (And by the way, this statistic from 1997 isn’t a typo. The ASVAB was last re-normed in 2004, and the sample group used for the norm was those folks who took the test in 1997.)

Composite scores (line scores): Composite scores are individually computed by each service branch. Each branch has its own particular system when compiling various standard scores into individual composite scores. These scores are used by the different branches to determine job qualifications. Find out much more about this in Chapter 2.

Understanding the big four: Your AFQT scores

The ASVAB doesn’t have an overall score. When you hear someone say, I got an 80 on my ASVAB, that person is talking about the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) score, not an overall ASVAB score. The AFQT score determines whether you qualify even to enlist in the military, and only four of the subtests are used to compute it:

Word Knowledge (WK)

Paragraph Comprehension (PC)

Arithmetic Reasoning (AR)

Mathematics Knowledge (MK)

Doing well on some of the other subtests is a personal-choice type of issue. Some of the subtests are used only to determine the jobs you qualify for. (See Chapter 2 for information on how the military uses the individual subtests.)

tip.eps Figure out which areas to focus on based on your career goals. If you’re not interested in a job requiring a score on the Mechanical Comprehension subtest, you don’t need to worry about doing well on that subtest. So as you’re preparing for the ASVAB, remember to plan your study time wisely. If you don’t need to worry about mechanics, don’t bother with that chapter in this book. Spend the time on Word Knowledge or Arithmetic Reasoning.

Calculating the AFQT score

The military brass (or at least its computers) determines your AFQT score through a very particular process:

1. Add the value of your Word Knowledge score to your Paragraph Comprehension score.

2. Convert the result of Step 1 to a scaled score, ranging from 20 to 62.

This score is known as your Verbal Expression or VE score.

3. To get your raw AFQT score, double your VE score and then add your Arithmetic Reasoning (AR) score and your Mathematics Knowledge (MK) score to it.

The basic equation looks like this:

Raw AFQT Score = 2VE + AR + MK

4. Convert your raw score to a percentile score, which basically compares your results to the results of thousands of other ASVAB test-takers.

For example, a score of 50 means that you scored better than 50 percent of the individuals the military is comparing you to.

Looking at AFQT score requirements for enlistment

AFQT scores are grouped into five main categories based on the percentile score ranges in Table 1-3. Categories III and IV are divided into subgroups because the services sometimes use this chart for internal tracking purposes, enlistment limits, and enlistment incentives. Based on your scores, the military decides how trainable you may be to perform jobs in the service.

warning_bomb.eps The U.S. Congress has directed that the military can’t accept Category V recruits or more than 4 percent of recruits from Category IV. If you’re in Category IV, you must have a high school diploma to be eligible for enlistment. Even so, if you’re Category IV, your chances of enlistment are small and mostly limited to the Army.

Depending on whether you have a high school diploma or a GED, the military has different AFQT score requirements. Check out Table 1-4.

The Navy has been known to raise its minimum AFQT requirements to 50 for females (just to qualify for enlistment) when it receives too many female applicants. Because of the limited number of females that it can house on ships, the Navy restricts the number of women who can enlist each year.

Checking out the military’s AFQT requirements for special programs

Achieving the minimum required AFQT score established by an individual branch gets your foot in the door, but the higher you score, the better. For example, if you need a medical or criminal history waiver in order to enlist, the military personnel who make those decisions are more likely to take a chance on you if they think you’re a pretty smart cookie than if you barely made the minimum qualifying score.

Individual branches of the military tie many special enlistment programs to minimum AFQT scores:

Army: The Army requires a minimum AFQT score of 50 to qualify for most of its incentive programs, such as a monetary enlistment bonus, the college-loan repayment program, and the Army College Fund.

Marine Corps: Like the Army, the Marine Corps requires a minimum AFQT score of 50 for most of its incentive programs, including the Geographic Area of Choice Program, the Marine Corps College Fund, and enlistment bonuses.

Navy: Applicants who want to participate in the Navy College Fund or college loan repayment program need to achieve a minimum score of 50.

remember.eps Enlistment programs are subject to change without notice based on the current recruiting needs of the service. Your recruiter should be able to give you the most up-to-date information. Or visit usmilitary.about.com.

tip.eps If you don’t know which kind of job you want to do in the military, the ASVAB helps you and the military determine your potential ability for different types of jobs. If you’re in this situation, review all the chapters in this book, brushing up on the basic principles of everything from science to electronics, but focus on the four subtests that enable you to qualify for enlistment: Word Knowledge, Paragraph Comprehension, Arithmetic Reasoning, and Mathematics Knowledge. Following this plan ensures a relatively accurate appraisal of your aptitude for various military jobs.

Do-Over: Retaking the ASVAB

An AFQT score of less than 10 is a failing score, but no branch of the service accepts that low of a score anyway. Therefore, you can fail to achieve a score high enough to enlist in the service branch you want, even if you pass the ASVAB. This means you need to work on one (or more) of the four core areas: Mathematics Knowledge, Arithmetic Reasoning, Reading Comprehension, and Word Knowledge. Parts II and III of this book are specifically designed to help you improve your scores on these four subtests.

When you’re sure that you’re ready, you can apply (through your recruiter) to take the ASVAB. After you take an initial ASVAB (taking the ASVAB in high school does count for retest purposes), you can retake the test after one month. After the first retest, you must again wait one month to test again. From that point on, you must wait at least six months before taking the ASVAB again.

You can’t retake the ASVAB on a whim or whenever you simply feel like it. Each of the services has its own rules concerning whether it allows a retest, and I explain them in the following sections.

remember.eps ASVAB tests are valid for two years, as long as you aren’t in the military. In most cases, after you join the military, your ASVAB scores remain valid as long as you’re in. In other words, except in a few cases, you can use your enlistment ASVAB scores to qualify for retraining years later.

U.S. Army retest policy

The Army allows a retest in one of the following instances:

The applicant’s previous ASVAB test has expired.

The applicant failed to achieve an AFQT score high enough to qualify for enlistment.

Unusual circumstances occur, such as if an applicant, through no fault of his own, is unable to complete the test.

remember.eps Army recruiters aren’t authorized to have applicants retested for the sole purpose of increasing aptitude area scores to meet standards prescribed for enlistment options or programs.

U.S. Air Force retest policy

For the U.S. Air Force, the intent of retesting is for an applicant to improve the last ASVAB scores so the enlistment options increase. Before any retest is administered, the recruiting flight chief must interview the applicant in person or by telephone and then give approval for the retest.

Here are a few other policies to remember:

The Air Force doesn’t allow retesting for applicants after they’ve enlisted in the Delayed Entry Program (DEP).

Current policy allows retesting of applicants who aren’t holding a job/aptitude area reservation and/or who aren’t in DEP but already have qualifying test scores.

Retesting is authorized when the applicant’s current line scores (mechanical, administrative, general, and electronic) limit the ability to match an Air Force skill with his or her qualifications.

U.S. Navy retest policy

The Navy allows retesting of applicants

Whose previous ASVAB tests have expired

Who fail to achieve a qualifying AFQT score for enlistment in the Navy

In most cases, individuals in the Delayed Entry Program (DEP) can’t retest. One notable exception is the Navy’s DEP Enrichment Program. This program provides for the provisional DEP enlistment of high school graduates with AFQT scores between 28 and 30. Individuals enlisted under the program are enrolled in academic enhancement training, retested with the ASVAB, and accessed to active duty, provided they score 31 or higher on the subsequent ASVAB retest.

Tracing the testing trail

In 1948, Congress made the Department of Defense develop a uniform screening test to be used by all the services. The Defense Department came up with the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT). This test consisted of 100 multiple-choice questions in areas such as math, vocabulary, spatial relations, and mechanical ability. The military used this test until the mid-1970s. Each branch of the service set its own minimum qualification (AFQT) score.

When the military decides to do something, it often acts with the lightning speed of a snail carrying a backpack. So in the 1960s, the Department of Defense decided to develop a standardized military selection and classification test and to administer it in high schools. That’s where your old buddy, the ASVAB, came from. The first ASVAB test was given in 1968, but the military didn’t use it for recruiting purposes for several years. In 1973, the draft ended and the nation entered the contemporary period in which all military recruits are volunteers. In 1976, the ASVAB became the official entry test used by all services.

The ASVAB remained unchanged until 1980, when the ASVAB underwent its first revision. The subtest areas remained the same, but several of the questions were updated to keep up with changes in technology.

In 1993, the computerized version was released for limited operational testing, but it didn’t begin to see wide-scale use until 1996. The questions on the computerized version of the ASVAB were identical to the questions on the paper version. It wasn’t until the end of 2002 that the ASVAB finally underwent a major revision. Two subsets (Coding Speed and Numerical Operations) were eliminated and a new subtest (Assembling Objects) was added to the computerized version. Also during the 2002 revision, all the questions were updated, and the order of the subtests was changed. The revised ASVAB was first rolled out in the computerized format, and the paper versions of the test were updated during the next year.

U.S. Marine Corps retest policy

The Marine Corps authorizes a retest if the applicant’s previous test is expired. Otherwise, recruiters can request a retest if the initial scores don’t appear to reflect the applicant’s true capability, considering the applicant’s education, training, and experience.

remember.eps For the Marine Corps, the retest can’t be requested solely because the applicant’s initial test scores didn’t meet the standards prescribed for enlistment options or programs.

U.S. Coast Guard retest policy

For Coast Guard enlistments, six months must have elapsed since an applicant’s last test before he or she may retest solely for the purpose of raising scores to qualify for a particular enlistment option.

The Coast Guard Recruiting Center may authorize retesting after one calendar month has passed from an initial ASVAB test if substantial reason exists to believe the initial test scores or subtest scores don’t reflect an applicant’s education, training, or experience.

Chapter 2

Knowing What It Takes to Get Your Dream Job

In This Chapter

Finding out there’s more to life than the AFQT score

Making sense out of line scores

Discovering how each military branch uses line scores

The Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) portion of the ASVAB is your most important score because it determines whether you can join the service of your choice. However, qualifying to join is only part of the picture. Unless you’d be content to spend your military career painting things that don’t move, you need to understand how the ASVAB relates to various military job opportunities.

Civilian employers generally use a person’s education and experience level when selecting candidates for a job position, but in the military, 99 percent of all enlisted jobs are entry-level positions. The military doesn’t require you to have a college degree in computer science before you’re hired to become a computer programmer. You don’t even have to have any previous computer experience, nor does the military care if you do. You’re going to go to military school to study how to make computers stand at attention and fly right.

Sounds like a good deal, right? So what’s the catch? Well, believe me — the military spends big bucks turning high school graduates into highly trained and skilled aircraft mechanics, language specialists, and electronic-doodad repair people. In an average year, the services enlist about 274,000 new recruits. Any way you look at it, that’s a lot of combat boots! Each and every recruit has to be sent to a military school to train for a job. Uncle Sam needs a way to determine whether a wet-behind-the-ears high school graduate has the mental aptitude to succeed at that job — preferably before he spends your hard-earned tax dollars.

Enter the ASVAB. The services combine various ASVAB subtest scores into groupings called composite scores or line scores. Through years of trial and error, the individual military services have each determined what minimum composite scores are required to successfully complete its various job training programs. In this chapter, you discover how those test scores translate into finding the military job of your dreams.

Eyeing How ASVAB Scores Determine Military Training Programs and Jobs

Each service branch has its own system of scores. Recruiters and military job counselors use these scores, along with other factors such as job availability, security clearance eligibility, medical qualifications, and physical strength, to match up potential recruits with military jobs.

remember.eps During the initial enlistment process, your service branch determines your military job or enlistment program based on established minimum line scores: various combinations of scores from individual subtests (see the next section for details). If you get an appropriate score in the appropriate areas, you can get the job you want — as long as that job is available and you meet other qualification factors.

For active duty, the Army is the only service that looks at the scores and offers a guaranteed job for all its new enlistees. In other words, every single Army recruit knows what his or her job is going to be before signing the enlistment contract. The other active-duty services use a combination of guaranteed jobs or guaranteed aptitude/career areas:

Air Force: About 40 percent of active duty Air Force recruits enlist with a guaranteed job. The majority enlists in one of four guaranteed aptitude areas, and during basic training, recruits are assigned to a job that falls into that aptitude area.

Coast Guard: The Coast Guard rarely, if ever, offers a guaranteed job in its active duty enlistment contracts. Instead, new Coasties enlist as undesignated seamen and spend their first year or so of service doing general work (Paint that ship!) before finally applying for specific job training.

Marine Corps: A vast majority of Marine Corps active duty enlistees are guaranteed one of several job fields, such as infantry, avionics, logistics, vehicle maintenance, aircraft maintenance, munitions, and so on. Each of these fields is further divided into specific subjobs, called Military Occupation Specialties (MOS). Marine recruits usually don’t find out their actual MOSs until about halfway through basic training.

Navy: Most Navy recruits enlist with a guaranteed job, but several hundred people each year also enlist in a guaranteed career area and then strike (apply) for the specific job within a year of graduating boot camp.

All enlistment contracts for the reserve forces (regardless of branch) contain guarantees for a specific job. Why? Because reserve recruiters recruit for vacancies in specific reserve units, usually located within 100 miles of where a person lives.

Understanding How Each Branch Computes Line Scores

A line score combines various standard ASVAB scores to see which jobs or training programs you qualify for. The standard scores are your scores on the individual ASVAB subtests (with Word Knowledge and Paragraph Comprehension combined as a Verbal Expression score):

General Science (GS)

Arithmetic Reasoning (AR)

Auto & Shop Information (AS)

Mathematics Knowledge (MK)

Mechanical Comprehension (MC)

Electronics Information (EI)

Assembling Objects (AO)

Verbal Expression (VE), the sum of Word Knowledge (WK) and Paragraph Comprehension (PC)

Each of the military services computes its line scores differently. Some calculations even include dummy scores — average scores received by thousands of test takers — for Numerical Operations (NO) and Coding Speed (CS), subtests that are no longer part of the ASVAB. The following sections outline how each branch comes up with its line scores.

Line scores and the Army

To compute line scores for job qualification, the Army combines the various scores into ten separate areas by simple addition of the ASVAB standard scores. Table 2-1 shows the line scores and the ASVAB subtests that make them up.

Line scores and the Navy and Coast Guard

The Navy and Coast Guard use the standard scores directly from the ASVAB: the individual subtest scores and Verbal Expression (VE) score, which is the sum of Word Knowledge (WK) and Paragraph Comprehension (PC).

Although the Navy and Coast Guard don’t use their line scores for officially determining jobs, the scores provide recruiters, job counselors, and recruits with a snapshot of which broad career areas recruits may qualify for. For example, the Navy regulation, which lists the qualifications to become an Air Traffic Control Specialist, states that an ASVAB score of VE + AR + MK + MC = 210 (or higher) is required for that job.

Table 2-2 shows the Navy and Coast Guard line scores that show up on the ASVAB score sheet.

Line scores and the Marine Corps

The Marine Corps computes its three line scores for job qualification by adding scores from various ASVAB subtests, as Table 2-3 shows.

Line scores and the Air Force

The U.S. Air Force uses standard scores from the ASVAB subtests to derive scaled scores in four aptitude areas called MAGE (mechanical, administrative, general, and electronics). The Air Force MAGE scores are calculated as percentiles, ranging from 0 to 99, which show your relationship to thousands of others who’ve taken the test. In other words, a percentile score of 51 indicates you scored better in this aptitude area than 50 percent of the testers who were used to establish the norm.

Table 2-4 lays out the four areas, the subtests used, and the formula used to calculate the score for each particular area. After calculating the score for a particular area, the test-scorer converts that score to a percentile.

Score! Speaking the lingo

When you sit down with your recruiter to discuss your ASVAB scores and what you qualify for, you may think he suddenly decided to speak in a foreign language. For job-qualification purposes, remember three key terms and their definitions:

Standard score: A standard score refers to individual ASVAB subtest scores (that is, Verbal Expression, Arithmetic Reasoning, Mathematics Knowledge, and so on).

Line score: A line score combines various standard scores that the services use for job qualification purposes.

AFQT score: Calculated from the math and English subtests of the ASVAB, the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) score is used by the military to determine overall enlistment qualification. Chapter 1 explains exactly how this critical score is computed.

Chapter 3

Getting Acquainted with Test-Taking and Study Techniques

In This Chapter

Choosing your weapon: Pencil or keyboard

Developing multiple-choice strategies

Making educated guesses

Getting some studying and test tips

Preparing down to the last detail

How many times have you heard someone say (or may have even said yourself), I just can’t take tests? Well, of course you can’t do well on tests if you keep telling yourself that! In basic training, your drill sergeant (hereafter known as Sir or Ma’am) will convince you that the words I can’t simply don’t exist in the military. If you don’t believe me, try telling your drill sergeant, I just can’t do push-ups. You will find that with sufficient practice (and your drill sergeant will ensure you get a lot of practice), you can do push-ups just as well as the next person. (Actually, I don’t recommend testing this, for reasons that should be obvious.) The truth is that those who do well on tests are those who’ve figured out how to study efficiently and how to use a dash of test-taking psychology.

This chapter includes information on how to prepare for the test — how you study and how and why you should take the practice exams. In addition, you get some inside info, such as secrets for guessing when you don’t know the answer to a question (although if you study for the test, that will never happen, right?). The tips and techniques provided in this chapter can help you get a jump on the ASVAB and your military career.

Taking the Test: Paper or Computerized?

Many versions of the ASVAB exist (although you probably won’t get a choice of which one to take), but they primarily boil down to two basic differences: the paper version and the computerized version. Each version has advantages and disadvantages, which I discuss in the following sections.

If you’re taking the ASVAB as part of the student program in high school, or if you’re already in the military and are retaking the ASVAB to qualify to retrain into a different job, you’ll take the paper version.

If you’re taking the ASVAB to enlist in the military, you’ll take the enlistment ASVAB. This version is available in paper format and via computer. There’s a great chance that you’ll take the computerized version (CAT-ASVAB), because to save time and money, the recruiting services often send applicants to the nearest Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) for testing, medical examination, and enlistment (one-stop shopping). The computerized version is used exclusively at MEPS.

tip.eps If you have your heart set on taking the test in paper format, ask your recruiter whether a Mobile Examination Test (MET) site is nearby. Roughly 685 MET sites are located throughout the United States (generally located in National Guard Armories). Your recruiter can schedule you to take the enlistment paper version at any one of these MET sites, which may offer testing sessions anywhere from once a month to several times per week.

Writing on hard copy: The advantages and disadvantages of the paper version

Modern technology isn’t always better. Taking the pencil-and-paper version of the ASVAB can provide you with certain advantages:

You can skip questions that you don’t know the answer to and come back to them later. This option can help when you’re racing against the clock and want to get as many answers right as possible. You can change an answer on the subtest you’re currently working on, but you can’t change an answer on a subtest after the time for that subtest has expired.

You may not make any marks in the exam booklet; however, you may make notes on your scratch paper. If you skip a question, you can lightly circle the item number on your answer sheet to remind yourself to go back to it. If you don’t know the answer to a question, you can mentally cross off the answers that seem unlikely or wrong to you and then guess based on the remaining answers. Be sure to erase any stray marks you make on your answer sheet before time is called for that subtest.

Killing trees isn’t the only disadvantage of the paper-based test. Other drawbacks include the