Kid thought he was scheduled to take the ASTB (aviation selection test battery) yesterday afternoon, but when he and a few others showed up, they weren't on the list that was supposed to be submitted. So, he rescheduled it for Thursday.
For those that don't know, it is the written test to see if you are someone to be considered for flight billets for Navy/Marines/Coasties.
I'm not sure how many times it can be taken, or how the scoring works. I think they only use the latest and greatest test? It is not some sort of super-scoring thing.
You can take it three times in your life. I think a month has to pass in between each test. Minimums have jumped around over the years and they vary between USN and USMC. I believe the minimums are 4/5/5 for USN and 4/6/6 for USMC. They only use the last result. So if one scores a 65 8/7/6 and the next test is a 60 5/6/7, then the latter score is used. There is no super-scoring, so a little bit of gamesmanship is required when thinking about multiple tests.
The ASTB is partially academic and partially skills based (particularly multi-tasking and spatial orientation). Airwarriors.com is a Naval Aviation Forum and your one-stop shop for ASTB gouge like what subjects are tested and how to prep for them. Test prep companies also sell prep-books, but the Navy nor Marines produce any official study guides or endorse a particular prep book. They also do not guarantee the accuracy of said books.
Caveat emptor.
The subjects are as follows:
Math Comprehension
Reading Comprehension
Mechanical Comprehension (Physics and the like)
Aviation and Nautical Information
Naval Aviation Trait Facet Inventory (Sort of like a personality test)
Performance Based Metrics (Multi-tasking, spatial orientation, and motor skills)
Now the scoring:
Let's take the first score above: 65 8/6/7
The first number (65) is known as the Officer Aptitude Rating (OAR). OAR is for non-aviation officer programs like OCS (Many flavors of officers, including future Pilots/NFOs, do OCS) and direct commissioning programs. It it to quantify the academic abilities of future officer candidates. It factors in results from Math, Reading, and Mechanical Comprehension only. It is on a scale of 20-80, with 50 being the 50% percentile. This produces a bell curve where one standard deviation (SD) is 10 from the mean. So 3 SDs gives us 20 and 80. A 65 would score in the 93% percentile in this example. However, this score moot for USNA and NROTC MIDN since they are already in a commissioning program.
Now the ASTB-E. The E just means electronic (i.e. computer based). The ASTB was a pencil and paper test way back when. The ASTB factors in the same tests as the OAR, but factors in the subsequent tests as well. The algorithm that is used to calculate scores is not public.
Scoring is based on a 1-9 scale. 1 being the worst and 9 being the best. Here are percentile breakdowns:
1: 1-4%
2: 4-11%
3: 11-23%
4: 23-40%
5: 40-60%
6: 60-77%
7: 77-89%
8: 89-96%
9: 96-99%
The first number (e.g. 8) is known as your Academic Quality Rating (AQR). This quantifies how potentially successful you will be in initial aviation academic training (API for the legacy folks, NIFE for the newbies like yours truly) and primary flight training ground school.
The second number (e.g. 6) is known as your Pilot Flight Aptitude Ranking (PFAR). This quantifies how potentially successful you'll be in Pilot Primary Flight Training.
The third number (e.g. 7) is known as your Flight Officer Flight Aptitude Ranking (FOFAR). This quantifies how potentially successful you'll be in NFO Primary Flight Training.
When actually looking at the scores, the only relevant scores are looked at. In other words, they are looking at your AQR and your relevant FAR (If you are getting looked at for Pilot, the board will look at AQR and PFAR. If you are being looked at for NFO, the board will look at AQR and FOFAR).
FOFAR is moot for USMC as USMC NFO wasn't an option after ~2019.
This is anecdotal, but from talking to NROTC friends, ASTB matters more for them to get selected for Pilot. At USNA, it seems that as long as you hit the minimums, you are good (but higher is always better). For OCS, it matters a ton since that is one of the ways they break candidates out.
Now, for the predictive value of scoring, don't be dissuaded by the minimums. If the minimums weren't good enough, they wouldn't be the minimums. I got the minimum (6 at the time since there was rash of washouts in Flight School) and I did pretty well in the program. Flight School is more of an attitude and effort program than a raw ability program. Even if you don't qualify the first time, give it another go. I didn't really do too hot on the Performance-Based Metrics (PBM) part the first time around, but did better after knowing what the test looked like. I'd personally only worry about it if you have taken a couple tests and still aren't meeting the marks. I will again plug taking it twice since the first time is scheduled for you (or it was back when I did it). You couldn't choose a convenient time. Subsequent tests are self-scheduled.
Gamers and flight simmers also tend to do better on the PBM since games like FPS games and flight sim games work a lot of skills the test is evaluating.
