Test-day plan

Strategy

Four weeks out

Take a full practice test cold to find your baseline and your weak sections. Don't study first — you want an honest picture. Then allocate: if you're borderline on enlistment eligibility, put 70% of your hours into AR, WK, PC, and MK, because those are the only four that affect the AFQT.

Weekly rhythm

Short daily sessions beat long weekend cramming. Flashcards work well for GS, WK, EI, AI, and SI — subjects that are mostly recall. Timed practice sets work better for AR, MK, and PC, where pacing is the real skill.

The week before

Stop learning new material and start consolidating. Redo the questions you got wrong, not the ones you got right. Take at least one full-length timed run so the length itself isn't a surprise.

The night before

Sleep. Fatigue costs more points than one more hour of review earns. Have your ID and paperwork ready so the morning is uneventful.

During the test

Answer every question — there's no penalty for guessing, and on the adaptive test a blank is a guaranteed miss. Take early questions seriously; they set the difficulty level the rest of the section builds from. If a question is genuinely beyond you, eliminate what you can and commit to a choice rather than burning three minutes.

Between sections

Each subtest is timed separately. Finishing one early does not add time to the next. Use the gap to reset — a few seconds of deliberate breathing between sections is worth more than skimming ahead.

If you're not happy with your score

Retesting is allowed, with waiting periods between attempts that vary by branch and situation. Your recruiter can tell you the current rules. A retake is only worth taking if you've actually changed something about your preparation in between.

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