ASTB & OAR Preparation

The OAR and the ASTB-E are the one part of a Navy OCS package you can still move. Your degree is finished, your GPA is fixed, your recommendations are written by other people. The test score is the number you can change in a few weeks of deliberate work — which is why it gets more attention here than its share of the package might suggest.

Worth being clear about what they are. The OAR — Officer Aptitude Rating — is three sections: math skills, reading comprehension, and mechanical comprehension. Every OCS applicant takes it. The ASTB-E is the full battery for aviation candidates: the OAR sections plus aviation and nautical information, naval aviation trait facets, and the Performance Based Measures battery flown on a stick and throttle. If you are not going aviation, the OAR is your whole test.

A reading order

  1. OAR Preparation: 12-Day Plan — start here if your test date is close. A short horizon changes what is worth studying.
  2. OAR Reading Comprehension — the section people under-prepare because it looks like the easy one. Practising on real Navy instructions is the trick; the passages on the test read like the documents, not like the SAT.
  3. ASTB Preparation with Math Gaps — for candidates whose maths went cold years ago, which is most people applying after a non-technical degree.
  4. ASTB-E Tips: the PBM — aviation candidates only. The Performance Based Measures section is a skill, not knowledge, and it is the part that most rewards knowing the format in advance.
  5. Retake Advice — read this before booking a retake, not after a non-selection. A retake is not free: the rules limit how often you can sit it, and a second score does not simply replace a first one in the board’s eyes.

The honest framing on scores

A score is only meaningful relative to the designator you are applying for. There is no universal “good OAR” — the number that makes you competitive for one community is unremarkable in another, which is covered in Navy OCS Competitiveness. Decide which board you are aiming at first, then decide whether your score needs work. Studying to raise a number you have not yet given a target to is the most common way people waste the weeks before a test.

The rest of the package — eligibility, the application steps, waivers, recruiters — is collected in Applying to Navy OCS.

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