ASVAB test
The ASVAB test is a test for students aspiring for a military career or for personal information. ASVAB means Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. The ASVAB test is a test to measure the aptitude of an individual. This test is sponsored by the Department of Defense and has 8 or 8 individual tests covering areas like General Science, Arithmetic Reasoning, Word Knowledge, Paragraph Comprehension, Mathematics Knowledge, Electronics Information, Auto & Shop Information, and Mechanical Comprehension. For students who take an online ASVAB test an additional test of ‘Assembling Objects’ is also included. Any civilian can take the ASVAB test. It is a multiple-choice question test and worlds most widely used test. It was first introduced in 1968.
The ASVAB was basically designed to measure the academic ability of an individual. The student taking the ASVAB test can check his capabilities with the help of the Career Exploration Scores. These scores can be easily compared to other student’s scores and the students can get an idea about their strengths and weaknesses. Also the percentile based scores are given out. Fifty percent of schools in the US host the ASVAB test. In a year more than 1 million students take the ASVAB test. It takes about three hours to complete the whole test. There are about 200 questions to answer in the test. It is better to answer a few practice questions before going in for the final ASVAB test.
There are no essay questions or any paragraph questions asked. Only multiple-choice questions are asked. The computer based ASVAB test is called the CAT- ASVAB (Computerized Adaptive Testing Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). By computerized it does not mean that the test taker should have any computer experience. The typical pencil paper ASVAB and CAT- ASVAB are both same except for an extra section of ‘Assembling Objects’ in the CAT-ASVAB test.
The multiple choice answers given are in the form of just answers, numbers, drawings, words or phrases. A scratch paper will be provided for rough work. All the sections have time allotted for completion. Sections like Numerical Operations and Coding Speed are seldom completed on time. This is applicable to a major lot of students. There is no penalty for wrong answers. So there is no harm in guessing the answers whether right or wrong. The ASVAB is conducted on every Monday at 6pm sharp. It ends by 9 or 9:30 pm. A photo identity of the individual taking the ASVAB has to be bought along for the test. It is not compulsory. This test is free of cost to everyone.