ASVAB: Computing the VE Score

The ASVAB - Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery is used by all branches of the military to determine aptitude and general academic ability of recruits. There are a few segments of the ASVAB that are heavily weighted. Knowing your Verbal Expression (VE) score as well as your AFQT score are significantly weighed should help you determine the areas you need to prepare well if you want certain jobs in the military.

The Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT) score is derived from four areas of the ASVAB: Basically, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. Specifically, the sub-tests used to make the AFQT are Paragraph Comprehension (PC), Word Knowledge (WK), Mathematics Knowledge (MK), and Arithmetic Reasoning (AR).

The VE Score is actually two of the above sub-tests: Paragraph Comprehension (PC) and Word Knowledge (WK).

The AFQT score is the most important ASVAB score, because it determines whether you can join the military service of your choice. Each of the services branches has set their own minimum AFQT scores

The Verbal Expression, or VE Score is one of the most important scores on the ASVAB. Not only is it used in computing the AFQT score, but it is also used by the services for computing many of the line scores used for military job qualifications.

To compute your VE score, the military adds the standard scores of your PC and WK, and then compares it to a chart very much like the one below.

A Note About Standard Scores. The standard scores are simply number correct. There are 35 Word Knowledge questions on the ASVAB and 15 Paragraph Comprehension questions, for a maximum possible added score of 50, which would equate to a VE score of 62.

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Computing the VE Score

PC+WK Standard Scores	VE Score
0-3	20
4-5	21
6-7	22
8-9	22
10-11	25
12-13	27
14-15	29
16-17	31
18-19	32
20-21	34
22-23	36
24-25	38
26-27	40
28-29	42
30-31	44
32-33	45
34-35	47
34-35	47
36-37	49
38-39	50
40-41	52
42-43	54
44-45	56
46-47	58
48-49	60
50	62

There are a few different versions of the ASVAB with different number of questions but cover all the nine sub-tests of the ASVAB. You will first take the ASVAB in high school - for many people. It is a paper version of the test. If you take it in your recruiter's office, you can take the computerized version. Ninety percent of the people who take the computerized version are doing so with the intent to enlist in the military, however there is a paper option the recruiter can give also.

Since the ASVAB determines what jobs you can or cannot do in the military, military members can also take it again to tryout for other jobs in their branch of service if they did not score high enough the first time.