Armed Forces / ASVAB

Those people who are taking the ASVAB with a view toward future enlistment are placed in certain fixed categories. These categories are established in order to meet Department of Defense guidelines and recruitment goals. Although the categories may be revised to meet unusual conditions, they are generally fixed categories.

These Department of Defense fixed categories are established directly from the percentile scores of those taking the ASVAB and from the composite AFQT scores. AFQT scores are always expressed as a percentile rank. In other words, the applicant's percentile ranking is a comparison of his or her AFQT scores with the scores of other men and women in the entire national population of test takers.

There are five standing categories established by Department of Defense profiles with Category I being the highest performance category. Category I and Category II test takers are above average in performance as reflected in overall ASVAB scores. Category III is an average performance category in terms of trainability. The performance categories are important to the Department of Defense because the ease with which recruits may be trained is a major cost factor for the Defense Department.

Categories IV and V are below average in terms of performance with a very low predictive rate of success in military training. Federal law has an impact upon those who score in the bottom two categories. Both law and policy limit the number of recruits who may be taken from those categories.

Those whose ASVAB scores are well below average and who fall into Category V are not eligible for enlistment in the military services. Those test takers who are placed in Category IV as the result of their AFQT/ASVAB scores may be permitted to enlist in some branches of the Armed Forces of the United States if they are regular high school graduates. The Defense Department distinguishes between "regular high school graduates" and those with a GED. You may want to consider an Army Distance Learning program.

Some of the services allow for the enlistment of an individual with a General Equivalency Diploma or GED, but services like the Air Force and U.S. Coast Guard do not. In nearly all cases, a Category IV performer must have graduated from a high school and be in possession of the high school's regular diploma. In fact, service branches like the Coast Guard and the U.S. Air Force rarely permit enlistment with any Category IV performer, since a large number of the military occupations of these services are highly technical. The United States Navy also has generally higher performance requirements on the AFQT, with rare exceptions.