Angie Papple Johnston - 2022 / 2023 ASVAB For Dummies

The ASVAB remained unchanged until 1980, when it 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 subtests (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. The most recent update occurred in 2008. The ASVAB was revised to better sync the line scores with the applicants’ qualified jobs.

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.

For Coast Guard enlistments, six months must have elapsed since an applicant’s last test before they 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

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 branch of your choice. However, qualifying to join is only part of the picture. Unless you’d be content to spend your military career performing a job you didn’t choose, 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, the vast majority 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. The military sends you to advanced individual training (the school you must complete after basic training) to teach you everything it wants you to know.

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 rescue divers. In an average year, the services aim to enlist about 150,000 new recruits. 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 these recruits have the mental aptitude to succeed at that job — preferably before he spends people’s 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.

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

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 high enough scores in the right 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, aside from those enlisting in the infantry or trying out for Special Forces. In other words, nearly every single Army recruit knows what their job is going to be before signing the enlistment contract. The other active duty services use a combination of guaranteed jobs or guaranteed aptitude and 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, these 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 Coast Guardsmen 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 sub-jobs, called Military Occupational Specialties (MOSs). Marine recruits often 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.SEMPER SUPRA: THE ASVAB AND THE ALL-NEW SPACE FORCEThe sky isn’t the limit anymore. The United States Space Force, the sixth military branch, operates under the U.S. Air Force (like the way the Marines are a department of the Navy). Right now, the branch is only accepting current airmen who transfer from the regular Air Force, soldiers from the Army, sailors from the Navy, and Marines. Eventually, when the Space Force begins to accept new enlistees, it’ll come up with its own AFQT and line score requirements. If you’re reading this book with the intention of eventually transferring to the USSF, you should set your sights on Air Force Specialty Code 1C6 (Space Systems Operations) or a job in acquisitions, engineering, intelligence, or cyber operations. Your recruiter can give you the most up-to-date information.