Customer Reviews

CliffsTestPrep Officer Candidate Tests

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

To be honest, I used probably less than half this book. I read through the verbal sections and those were ok. I skipped much of the math tutorials because I use math all the time in school. But when I got to scale reading, 3 out of 10 of the samples questions had incorrect answers. That was a shocker to me. How do book editors let 3 errors go unnoticed. Following that, in the mechanical section, there's a statement about how you compare viscosities of liquids.
"engine oil has a high viscosity because it flows easily while molasses has a low viscosity because it flows quite slowly."
For those of us who've had a decent amount of exposure to either math, science, or mechanics, we would know this is a complete fallacy. The typist probably got "high" and "low" mixed up late at night while drinking liters of coffee. But this does a huge disservice to anyone who isn't too familiar with these things.

I give this book 2 stars based on the absurdity of the errors.

I think that this book is the better of the two that I bought if you are non-technical. The test is now 12 sections. I took the test on March the 10th, 2006. No reading comprehension or Data Interpertation any more. I would buy this book just so that you are familar with the style of the questions. More of the test is concentrated on the Military Flight Aptitude Tests. If you want to be a navagator or pilot definitly buy the military flight book. It is even out of date too with a few sections not covered. There is one section of the test you can't study for which is section 12 of the test. Don't worry it isn't hard for anyone that graduated from college. General science is included in the test. Chart reading. the airplane direction with the instraments and aviation knowledge are still on the test. Movement of the blocks, and hidden objects are still on the test and the blocks touching the other blocks which the format of that has changed.

This book has a ton of typographical errors. This book and the Arco book appear to be the only 2 books available as study guides for the AFOQT. After buying and studying from both books, I am not surprised the Air Force recommends studying from other guides like SAT, ACT, GRE, etc. The explanations are poor also. I've been studying from these books and bought other guides and have basically been using the other guides to find explanations for similar questions that I do not understand.

This book is full of typographical errors and wrong equations in the math section. I called Cliffs and reported at least 29 pages with problems on them.

This book I think is better than Barron's Officer Candidate School test prep book, however there are still a lot of typos throughout. It's good for general help though.

There's more info on it at this link:

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This book is a waste of time and money. Barron's and ARCO do a much better job of preparing you for OCS exams. Cliff Notes should be ashamed to market this product.

This is an aweful test prep book. I took the ASTB and used this book only for the practice tests. It created a ton of extra stress because I was convinced I was going to fail the mechanical comprehension section after taking the practice tests in this book. I am an Aerospace Engineer by profession and could answer most of the questions, but only with a physics book at my side and a graphic calculator. Absolutely terrible test prep book and it didn't even have any spatial appreciation prep material. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. IT IS A WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY.

I bought this book for ASTB and was sorely disappointed. It was like someone told them the general areas the ASTB covered and they made up their own questions. It wants you to learn things that will never show up on the ASTB and then proceeds to not even mention large sections of the ASTB like the spatial reasoning portion or the Aviation and Nautical Information portion. Even ignoring these elements, the fact that the book has numerous errors made me throw mine away in disgust.

I'm not a rocket scientist but I'm not an idiot either. This book is one of the worst test preps I have ever seen. It contains a lot of simple mistakes I'm suprised the publishers did not catch. Plus...many of the test questions are directly recycled from the ASVAB prep book from the same author.

This book helps to brush up on a few key points, like math and mechanical. It depends on which test you are taking. It dosn't cover much of what is on the ASTB, it offers a little help, but not much.