Scoring Information for Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB)

The Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT) Score

All five branches of the military compute your AFQT score—the one that determines whether or not you can enlist—in the same way. Only the Verbal Equivalent (which you determined by adding Word Knowledge and Paragraph Comprehension scores and then converting to a scaled score), Arithmetic Reasoning, and Mathematics Knowledge scaled scores count toward your AFQT. The military just wants to know if you have basic reading and arithmetic skills. The score conversion goes like this:

2(VE) + AR + MK = AFQT

Scoring Key

Subtest:

• General Science (GS)
• Arithmetic Reasoning (AR)
• Word Knowledge (WK)
• Paragraph Comprehension (PC)
• Mathematics Knowledge (MK)
• Electronics Information (EI)
• Auto and Shop Information (AS)
• Mechanical Comprehension (MC)
• Verbal Equivalent (VE=WK+PC)

In other words, your AFQT (scaled score) is your Verbal Equivalent scaled score, doubled, added to your Arithmetic Reasoning and Mathematics Knowledge scaled scores.

Military Occupational Specialty Qualifying Scores

If your AFQT is high enough to get you in, the next thing your scores will be used for is to help determine which Military Occupational Specialities (MOSs) you qualify for. For this purpose, the branches of the military use composite scores—different from the AFQT—made up of scores on various subtests.

Each branch of the military has its own way of computing composites and its own classification system for the MOSs. The tables here use the Army's MOSs and composites. All of the branches offer similar MOSs, and the composite scores required are also similar. So if you're considering another branch of the service, you can still use these tables to get a good idea of where you stand.