What is the ASVAB?
The Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery is a series of tests developed by the Department of Defense. The series of test consists of 8 sections to judge your knowledge in various areas to find out which military occupation will best fit you. • What is MEPS? Joining the military requires two (or more) trips to the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS). At a very minimum, you make a trip to MEPS for initial processing, then a second trip to MEPS for final processing on the day you ship out to basic training. • Basic Combat Training Don’t let the name fool you. Basic Combat Training (BCT) is anything but basic. It’s nine weeks of hard-core mental and physical drills that change you forever and prepare you for your new job: Citizen-Soldier, protector of a nation. Basic Training is a physical challenge for even the most highly athletic people.
The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is a grueling half-day examination given to 900,000 juniors and seniors in 13,000 high schools and post-secondary schools every year. The battery consists of 9 individual tests on the following subjects: Word Knowledge, Paragraph Comprehension, Arithmetic Reasoning, Mathematics Knowledge, General Science, Auto & Shop Information, Mechanical Comprehension, Electronics Information, and Assembling Objects. Unless a school district or high school selects option 8, the data from the ASVAB is forwarded to recruiters and to the military’s Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies Program, a massive database that collects information on approximately 30 million US citizens from 16 to 24 years of age.
