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 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.
U.S. Coast Guard retest policy
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
Knowing What It Takes to Get Your Dream Job
IN THIS CHAPTER
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.
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 factors such as job availability, security clearance eligibility, and medical qualifications, to match up potential recruits with military jobs.
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
