I did not feel confident walking out of the test. It seems that most people feel that way and still do just fine. I was really bummed out thinking I need to choose a different career path when I walked out of there, then I talked to some other ATC trainees and they all said they felt the exact same, then I came on here and did some reading and felt better. (I had not been on here or stuckmic before the test). I did not do any practicing for the test at all, had no idea what to expect.
Angles, Math, and Dials I would be surprised if I got a single one wrong, that stuff is cake for me.
Scan - Felt mediocre about that. The thing that kept on bothering me was the keyboards they use had the DELETE key in a place that I've never seen before, and Backspace does not work. So quite often if I mistyped a number I would go for the backspace key and find it not working to delete the number, and then go for the delete key and find that it wasn't where I expected it to be. When you are being graded on your quickness and accuracy, these to things are bothersome (at least they were for me). A little more practice would have been beneficial.
Letter Factory - Despite the directions I still felt like I did a bit of learning on the fly in letter factory. I got in a pretty good rhythm of placing boxes and ordering boxes, though I do remember once that I forgot to order a box and the game ordered it for me, and I had one single letter fall off the conveyor belt when I got behind. I hit the 'order boxes' button once I think when I didn't need to order boxes, and a big red sign pops up saying not to do that (supposedly it penalizes you for this). Also probably grabbed 1 or 2 letters and put them in a "less full" box which you are supposedly penalized for. The situational awareness questions were a disaster I felt... every time they came up 3 of my 4 answers were a complete and utter guess, even though I was actively trying to pay attention to what letters were coming down, what color boxes had what letters in them, etc. It was total guesswork. Maybe 1 out of 4 I had a somewhat sort-of educated guess on, but for the most of it was complete random guessing. Did not feel good about that.
ATC Scenario - this is the section I felt could have been the most helpful to have a good simulator to play at home on (I read now that there are some available). I felt like I spent a little bit of time "learning by messing up" even though I read the directions thoroughly. I did not feel good when I finished the scenarios. Out of the 4 rounds of play, I crashed probably 8-10 planes, three quarters of these were in one single session (session 2 of 4). A couple mid-airs (two that I can recall specifically) and a couple hitting the outside walls because I vectored them and then got preoccupied with another plane. I had a lot of planes go flying in to the airports at M or F speed, so those I don't think count as "reached their destination" which hurts your score I believe. As best I can remember my efficiency scores were something like 54, 44 (the one I crashed all those planes on), 65, and 82. I did not feel at all confident about this area of the test. I felt horrible about having crashed planes and figured I was screwed as far as my score was concerned.
Analogies - I felt that this section was disastrous. The 'word meaning' analogies are cake, but the other types, "vowel sounds" and "letter combinations" where you have to look at how the letters are organized in the word and then relate that to how the others are organized in the word, I felt really bad about most of those. The graphical analogies were WAY more complicated than I figured they'd be. With regards to time, I started running out of time with the analogies. I had to answer the last 6 or 8 of them with almost complete guesswork in the last 2 minutes allowed. I would suspect that I got most of those wrong because they were literally only given about 10 seconds of consideration (and like I said, they are pretty complicated if you ask me) and then I just chose an answer. I did answer all questions, but how many I got correct I'm scared to hypothesize.
Psych questions - I basically answered every one with whatever my 'first instinct' was. You can go back and forth about what you "think" they want you to say, etc, but with 135 questions, if you're faking it they will probably find out, so I just answered honestly and with my first instinct. Most of my answers ended up being "somewhat agree" or "somewhat disagree" because a lot of those questions are hard to answer in black and white.
For instance one of the questions was "have you ever been mean to someone" or something like that. Well of course I have, but I'm not a mean person so I just went with "somewhat agree." Frustrating section.
Anyways, with all my lamenting and figuring I did horribly, I ended up with a 94.
