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 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 175,000 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.
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.
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:
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.
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):
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.
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.
Table 2-1 The U.S. Army’s Ten Line Scores
Line Score |
Standard Scores Used |
Formula Used |
Clerical (CL) |
Verbal Expression (VE), Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), and Mathematics Knowledge (MK) |
VE + AR + MK |
Combat (CO) |
Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), Coding Speed (CS), Auto & Shop Information (AS), and Mechanical Comprehension (MC) |
AR + CS + AS + MC |
Electronics (EL) |
General Science (GS), Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), Mathematics Knowledge (MK), and Electronics Information (EI) |
GS + AR + MK + EI |
Field Artillery (FA) |
Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), Coding Speed (CS), Mathematics Knowledge (MK), and Mechanical Comprehension (MC) |
AR + CS + MK + MC |
General Maintenance (GM) |
General Science (GS), Auto & Shop Information (AS), Mathematics Knowledge (MK), and Electronics Information (EI) |
GS + AS + MK + EI |
General Technical (GT) |
Verbal Expression (VE) and Arithmetic Reasoning (AR) |
VE + AR |
Mechanical Maintenance (MM) |
Numerical Operations (NO), Auto & Shop Information (AS), Mechanical Comprehension (MC), and Electronics Information (EI) |
NO + AS + MC + EI |
Operators and Food (OF) |
Verbal Expression (VE), Numerical Operations (NO), Auto & Shop Information (AS), and Mechanical Comprehension (MC) |
VE + NO + AS + MC |
Surveillance and Communications (SC) |
Verbal Expression (VE), Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), Auto & Shop Information (AS), and Mechanical Comprehension (MC) |
VE + AR + AS + MC |
Skilled Technical (ST) |
General Science (GS), Verbal Expression (VE), Mathematics Knowledge (MK), and Mechanical Comprehension (MC) |
GS + VE + MK + MC |
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 that 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.
Table 2-2 The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard’s Line Scores
Line Score |
Standard Scores Used |
Formula Used |
Engineman (ENG) |
Auto & Shop Information (AS) and Mathematics Knowledge (MK) |
AS + MK |
Administrative (ADM) |
Mathematics Knowledge (MK) and Verbal Expression (VE) |
MK + VE |
General Technical (GT) |
Arithmetic Reasoning (AR) and Verbal Expression (VE) |
AR + VE |
Mechanical Maintenance (MEC) |
Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), Auto & Shop Information (AS), and Mechanical Comprehension (MC) |
AR + AS + MC |
Health (HM) |
General Science (GS), Mathematics Knowledge (MK), and Verbal Expression (VE) |
GS + MK + VE |
Mechanical Maintenance 2 (MEC2) |
Assembling Objects (AO), Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), and Mechanical Comprehension (MC) |
AO + AR + MC |
Electronics (EL) |
Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), Electronics Information (EI), General Science (GS), and Mathematics Knowledge (MK) |
AR + EI + GS + MK |
Nuclear Field (NUC) |
Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), Mechanical Comprehension (MC), Mathematics Knowledge (MK), and Verbal Expression (VE) |
AR + MC + MK + VE |
Engineering and Electronics (BEE) |
Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), General Science (GS), and two times Mathematics Knowledge (MK) |
AR + GS + 2MK |
Operations (OPS) |
Arithmetic Reasoning (AR) and Mathematics Knowledge (MK) |
AR + MK |
The Marine Corps computes its three line scores for job qualification by adding scores from various ASVAB subtests, as Table 2-3 shows.
Table 2-3 The Marine Corps’s Line Scores
Line Score |
Standard Scores Used |
Formula Used |
Mechanical Maintenance (MM) |
General Science (GS), Auto & Shop Information (AS), Mathematics Knowledge (MK), and Mechanical Comprehension (MC) |
GS + AS + MK + MC |
General Technical (GT) |
Verbal Expression (VE) and Arithmetic Reasoning (AR) |
VE + AR |
Electronics (EL) |
General Science (GS), Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), Mathematics Knowledge (MK), and Electronics Information (EI) |
GS + AR + MK + EI |
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.
Table 2-4 The U.S. Air Force’s MAGE Scores
Line Score |
Standard Scores Used |
Formula Used |
Mechanical |
General Science (GS), Mechanical Comprehension (MC), and two times Auto & Shop Information (AS) |
GS + MC + 2AS |
Administrative |
Numerical Operations (NO), Coding Speed (CS), and Verbal Expression (VE) |
NO + CS + VE |
General |
Arithmetic Reasoning (AR) and Verbal Expression (VE) |
AR + VE |
Electronics |
General Science (GS), Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), Mathematics Knowledge (MK), and Electronics Information (EI) |
GS + AR + MK + EI |
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