Just thought I should drop a post in here for anyone that is about to take the Nuke test with the Navy any time soon..
With an ASVAB score of 94, and after reading some posts on this site about the test being "easy" and "entry-level" or "basic stuff" I assumed that I would do just fine without studying much. Couldn't have been more wrong, it's pretty damn challenging, I'll try to provide a bit of info on some questions I had at the end though. The minimum requirement to be accepted is a 55/80 on the test, I got a 54. Yep. And to top it all off I forgot to answer ONE question. And don't expect any sympathy either, I got so close to passing he had to go through my results 4 times to make sure he wasn't reading it wrong, even my recruiter asked him jokingly (but not jokingly) to just give me one point haha. So now, basically, I have to wait 90 days to retest, and that's only allowed once I complete a college-level math course and provide my transcripts. Awesome. Yeah, i should have put more effort into preparing, but I figured after reading what others put that it wasn't too challenging and I'd be alright, and now i get to suffer the consequences.
I'm in a bad place right now in my life, I'm 21, nothing to show for what I've accomplished, I've lived in at least 6 different places this year alone and I don't even have a car... mostly due to previous bad choices. I NEEDED this to work, it was an oppurtunity to change the direction I was headed and make something of myself like I should have years ago, and because of some misunderstanding on my part and misleading information that I blindly and regrettably believed, I'm back to square one. I can't wait another 3 months to pass it, then another 6-9 months to ship out.
I guess what I'm saying is, don't make the same mistake I did, prepare for this test! Study, then study some more. Shit, study a third time even. It's much easier to just do it right the first time. Anyway, I only posted this to try to provide some insight for people in a similar situation, I might not be nuke material anymore but if I can help someone else make the right choice I'd be happy with just that.
Things you should study: (the test is actually Top Secret, literally behind lock and key, so I might get in trouble for saying too much but oh well I'll try my best)
***Sines, Cosines, and Tangents
***Formulas for: diameter, circumference, area, and volume for circles/spheres
***Vectors & Fulcrums
***transferring Km/H into M/s & M/s/s
***Momentum of an object and how it is transferred, i.e. a 4 pound ball moving at 10 feet per second strikes a 12 pound stationary ball directly, what change in momentum will the 4 pound ball experience caused by the reaction force.
***F.O.I.L!! yeah, First, Inner, Outer, Last. i.e. (x + 5)(x - 3) and equations with the division of 2 fractions, both with annoying variables in them.
***Hydraulics - i.e. how much pressure needs to be exerted upon a 4 inch (radius i think) hydraulic tube in order to lift a 1600lb weight on the other side resting on a 128 in (radius) tube
***(random) - plane moving at 160 mph increases to 340 mph in 20 minutes, what is the feet per second per second that it has to speed up - I vaguely remember but thats somewhat how it went
***triangles- isosceles, scalene, and right triangles.
***both kinds of - geometric angles AND temperatures (not really converting farenheit to celsius, i think it was a made up version of temperature they were just looking for the right method of finding the answer)
***Sigmas ( i think thats what theyre called. looks like a backwards E but pointier)
***Logarithms. Worst thing designed mathematically, ever. Period. I couldn't do them right even when I was in class learning about them, let alone 4 years later.
***half-life of an element, i.e. its halflife is 12 hours, how many are left after 3 days.
*** Pi. no symbol for it on my keyboard hah. remember the fraction form
***multiplying, dividing, simplifying and combining fractions.
SIDE NOTES:
***Be careful when answering, the answer may be in an odd format... i.e 7 1/3 might look like 22/3
***Don't be afraid to skip, its a 2 hour test with 80 questions, if you don't know it, skip it and go back later, maybe a future question will help it make more sense. Im not just saying this either every teacher you've ever had.
***My recruiters chief told me with the Navy the right answer is the longest answer a lot of the time, thats how it is with advancement tests at least.
***This might seem obvious, but its quite possibly the reason I didn't pass - DON'T LEAVE ANY QUESTION BLANK - 3 separate people told me after the fact, "if you don't know, then Charlie out" (or "C" yourself out) pretty sure it means just guess C..
That's all I'm going to say, don't remember a whole lot more and considering how its classified that's probably a good thing. So, if youre going to study, use this information, I took the test 10/23/2013.
I wasn't planning on this being such a long post, apologies & good luck.