First off I want to thank everyone who posted their POSS test experience. This forum truly helped me out so I promised myself I'd give back to those that seek help from these forums. Ok now on to business. I took the POSS/BMST test last week and passed both. The first section was assembly. It is not much different from the practice tests except for a couple being a bit harder. We had 10 minutes to solve 20 questions. I answered the first 16 and then time was up so I was forced to leave the last four blank. The next section was mechanical concepts in which we had to answer like 44 problems in 20 minutes. This section was the same as the practice test and shouldn't be a problem for anyone who has an electrical/mechanical engineering background or anyone who has taken physics 1 which covers the basics of thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, rotational motion, moments, etc. I finished the section with some time to spare and had to take "educated guesses" on about 5 problems I felt iffy on. My advice on guessing is if you answered the majority of the problems with confidence and you left lets say 5 blank then why not guess. You either have a 1/3 or 1/2 shot so go for it. Now excuse my lack for better words but this next section really sucks. The section I'm of course speaking of is the dreaded tables and graphs. I went in cold for this section. I imagine that everyone that is invited to take this test can read data from a table or graph so that isn't the issue for this section. This section is about straight up speed. There shouldn't really be many errors. I was able to finish 54 out of the 60 on the table section. We were given 5 minutes. Now the graph section gets a little confusing so be a bit careful because the lines do overlap a lot. I was able to finish 18 out of the 24 questions we had to answer in 4 minutes. If you don't finish no need to worry. I only finished 75% of the graphs and was still able to pass. The next section, Reading Comprehension, was by far the easiest. 4 passages, 36 questions, 30 minutes. Really simple. Most people with an Mechanical Engineering background can answer most of the questions without reading the passage since they dealt with viscosity, pressure measurement techniques, and heat transfer. This part is identical to the practice tests. Now the Math section was 47 questions with 17 minutes to answer them. If you pride yourself on your ability to quickly solve basic math problems in your head then you have no worries for this sections. For those of you who do not I implore you to skip the conversion part completely and do the simple (and when I say simple I mean SIMPLE) algebra problems. Get those small fries out of the way. Then do the world problems which again are not very hard but take a little bit more time. Now take care of the easy conversions and if time allows you take care of the harder ones. I was able to finish this section completely feeling pretty confident in every answer. Oh and also do not be afraid to pick "N" as your answer. There were about 4 or 5 "N" answers on my test. That's my POSS test breakdown. I'm sorry I can't tell you how it's graded because I truly don't know. The proctor kinda hinted towards not guessing. I honestly didn't get a chance to even guess aside from a few problems on the mechanical concepts but if I were to be be 100% honest I'd tell you I would guess. My mentality is if I answered enough with confidence I don't care if I have a couple wrong. I mean if they do penalize you for wrong answers who cares if you truly believe you got that many more right and if they don't then hey you might just get some more right. Just my two cents I know not everyone thinks like I do.
As for the BMST its really a you know it or you don't exam. 90 problems in 3 hours. Simple kinematic physics such as this guy gets a 200 ft headstart and runs at 2 mph while a second guy runs at 5mph how long till they travel the same distance. Some trig, basic chem like periodic table stuff, more algebra. Remember SOHCAHTOA.
Well that's it I hope this helps someone out there who is eagerly waiting to take their POSS test. Good Luck to you all