Once students discover what our career exploration resources can tell them about their aptitudes and abilities, they will rush out to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). This career aptitude test should help them (and their parents) figure out what career directions may be most appropriate.
What is the ASVAB?
The ASVAB is actually a multi-aptitude test battery known as the Career Exploration Program. It is available at over 14,000 schools nationwide and is maintained by the Department of Defense. The ASVAB comprises ten individual tests: Word Knowledge, Paragraph Comprehension, Mathematics Knowledge, Arithmetic Reasoning, General Science, Auto and Shop Information, Mechanical Comprehension, Electronics Information, Numerical Operations and Coding Speed. Not only do you receive scores on each of these individual tests, you also receive composite scores. Composite scores combine individual tests to yield Verbal, Math, and Academic Ability scores. Each ASVAB test area is timed, and the whole test takes about three hours.
What is the ASVAB Career Exploration Program?
The ASVAB (Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery) Career Exploration Program is a tool to help your son or daughter make better school and career decisions. It has two parts:
- Exploring Careers: ASVAB Workbook, containing an interest inventory and an exercise to help you learn about occupations and how you match up to them.
- The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB): an aptitude test.
This program helps students decide whether they should go on to college, choose a private vocational-technical school, enter the world of work, join Today's Military, or take yet another road. Ask your high school counselor about it.
What is aptitude?
Aptitude can be defined as the capabilities you have developed that indicate your readiness to become proficient in a certain type of activity (given the opportunity.) This may refer to your capacity to learn a particular type of work or to your potential for general training. The ASVAB measures aptitudes that are related to success in different jobs.
Who should take the ASVAB?
Sophomores, juniors, and seniors in high school may take the ASVAB. The more your son or daughter knows about his or her abilities, the better he or she will be able to make realistic plans. The ASVAB Career Exploration Program provides young people with information to help them think about different career possibilities.
Does Today's Military use the ASVAB?
Yes. With the student's permission, ASVAB results are shared with the military as well as with the student's guidance counselor. To the military, ASVAB scores help identify the occupations in the military best suited to the student's abilities. There are 152 career fields in today's military. The military services want American youth to know how the military can help them build a sound occupational and educational foundation.
Where can you take it?
The ASVAB is given in over 14,000 high schools across the country. The schools determine when and where the ASVAB will be given. If you find out your son's or daughter's school does not participate in the program, the schools guidance counselor can request the ASVAB or direct you to a nearby school to take it. You may also ask a local military recruiter to give your son or daughter the ASVAB (although you can't complete the full Career Exploration Program through a recruiter).
How early can you take it?
You can take the ASVAB as early as sophomore year in high school. However, if enlisting in Today's Military is on your mind, you need to take it no more than two years from the date of enlistment. We recommend that you take the ASVAB before you commit to being processed into the military. If you do, you'll know beforehand what military jobs you're eligible to do.
Contact your local recruiter for more information.
