(a)The number of persons originally enlisted or inducted to serve on active duty (other than active duty for training) in any armed force during any fiscal year whose score on the Armed Forces Qualification Test is at or above the tenth percentile and below the thirty-first percentile may not exceed 20 percent of the total number of persons originally enlisted or inducted to serve on active duty (other than active duty for training) in such armed force during such fiscal year.
(b)A person who is not a high school graduate may not be accepted for enlistment in the armed forces unless the score of that person on the Armed Forces Qualification Test is at or above the thirty-first percentile; however, a person may not be denied enlistment in the armed forces solely because of his not having a high school diploma if his enlistment is needed to meet established strength requirements.
An AFQT score is derived from the ASVAB(essentially the militaries’ IQ test). IQ scores are based on a normal distribution of scores from the general population with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. So the 30th percentile represents an IQ score of 92 while the 10th percentile would correlate with an IQ of 81.
One night on radio watch, I dug through the laptop we were keeping a log in and found a spreadsheet containing everyone in our company’s asvab scores. It was a fascinating thing to look at. We were MI, and this was back when there was a combat arms MOS in MI still, which I was. And we were always made fun of because we had the lowest asvab entry score (65) while many people had masters degrees. 7 out of 10 of the highest scores were were in my squad. We also had the lowest, but that’s a given. I think I remember I had the highest in the sqaud and my team had the highest average.
You can still be very intelligent and still want to roll around in the dirt and play with the big guns.