PicatDrill / estimate method v1.0

    How we estimate your AFQT-equivalent

    Our estimate from your performance on our items. Your official AFQT is scaled differently and will differ.

    What goes in

    Your percent correct on our items for four subtests only: Arithmetic Reasoning, Mathematics Knowledge, Word Knowledge and Paragraph Comprehension. The other six subtests feed branch line scores and contribute nothing to this number.

    The arithmetic

    1. VE = mean(WK%, PC%)
    2. RAW = (2 × VE) + AR% + MK% — range 0 to 400. Then COMPOSITE = RAW / 4 — range 0 to 100. This mirrors the published AFQT formula 2·VE + AR + MK, applied to our own percent scale.
    3. The composite is mapped to an AFQT-equivalent percentile using the anchor table below, interpolating linearly inside the band to a single whole number from 1 to 99.
    4. Below a composite of 20 or above 90 we report the band as a range rather than a point, because that is where our mapping is least stable.

    The anchor table

    CompositeAFQT-equivalentCategory
    01919V
    20291015IVC
    30371620IVB
    38462130IVA
    47613149IIIB
    62725064IIIA
    73906592II
    911009399I

    The category boundaries are the Department of Defense's published ones. The composite column is ours.

    The two approximations we make

    1. Verbal Expression: the real VE is an optimally weighted composite of unrounded standard scores, and that weighting is not published. We average our Word Knowledge and Paragraph Comprehension percentages instead — the same structure, not the same scaling.
    2. The mapping from our composite to a percentile is ours and is unvalidated. It is the single largest source of error in this estimate. Version 2 recalibrates it against candidates who report their real AFQT back to us.

    The two biases you should know about

    1. Our run is untimed, exactly like the real PiCAT. Measured against a proctored ASVAB, which is timed, this estimate likely runs optimistic.
    2. The estimate is least stable at the extremes, which is why we show a range rather than a point below a composite of 20 or above 90.

    Where it is also used

    The same calculation, in the same module, decides the early stop during a run: if your AFQT-equivalent is below 10 after the first five subtests, the run ends there, because below that a PiCAT cannot be verified. There is no second version of this number anywhere in the site.

    What version 2 changes

    This version has never been compared against a real AFQT result, so we make no claim that it has been validated. Version 2 recalibrates the composite-to-percentile mapping against candidates who take the real test and report their official AFQT back to us. Until then, treat the figure as a rough read on your own practice, not a prediction.

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