GT, short for General Technical, is a line score built from your Arithmetic Reasoning and Verbal Expression results (the Marine Corps adds Mechanical Comprehension). It is not your AFQT. A GT of 100 is average, and 110 is the number that Army Special Forces and the Washington Army National Guard's officer and warrant officer programs list. Arithmetic Reasoning word problems raise it fastest, then vocabulary, then reading.
Your ASVAB score sheet carries two kinds of results. The AFQT is a percentile from 1 to 99 that decides whether you can enlist at all. Line scores, which the Services also call composites, decide which jobs and programs you can apply for. The program office's applicant FAQs draw the same split.
GT is one of those composites, and each Service builds it a little differently. The Army adds AR and VE, then rescales the sum. The Marine Corps adds Mechanical Comprehension to the same two. The Navy reports the same AR plus VE sum with no rescaling: the 1997 report calls that Navy sum GT, and the official ASVAB site's composite table, updated April 2025, lists it as Navy Specialized 1.
The differences matter as soon as you compare your number with a requirement. The formulas below come from the Defense Manpower Data Center's 1997 score scale report by Daniel Segall, the document that defines the current scale.
Section 2.5.3 of the report explains the Army's extra step. The plain AR plus VE sum has a mean of about 100 but a standard deviation of only 18.6, so the Army stretches it onto the same mean-100, SD-20 metric as its other line scores and reports GT on that scale. If you add AR and VE by hand, your sum lands within 2 points of the Army GT for any sum from 67 to 133. Near 110 the gap is about 1 point, which is why an AR plus VE sum of 109 is enough for an Army GT of 110.
VE is not a test you sit. It is computed from Word Knowledge and Paragraph Comprehension. On the current scale it is not their simple sum: section 2.3 of the report weights them so that PC carries 0.61934 of the weight of WK, then puts the result on the same mean-50, SD-10 scale as a subtest. In standard score terms, VE = 0.654918 x WK + 0.405617 x PC - 3.026712, rounded. The Verbal Expression guide works through that formula in detail.
On the Army and Marine Corps scales, 100 is the mean of the 1997 reference population and 20 points is one standard deviation, so 110 sits half a standard deviation above average.
Applicants score a little above that reference group. The report's Table 5.2 puts the 2002 applicant means at 101.8 for Army GT and 104.8 for Marine GT, so its applicant tables are the better guide. In that 2002 cohort, 33.5 percent of Regular Army applicants scored 110 or higher on the current GT scale (Table F.1), and 38.3 percent of Marine Corps applicants did on the Marine version (Table F.22). That is about 1 Army applicant in 3 and a little under 2 Marine applicants in 5.
Programs that use GT publish their own cut scores and change them. The table lists only requirements stated on an Army or Marine Corps page read for this guide. Three goarmy.com pages call the requirement a "TECH" score. The site does not say outright that TECH means GT, but its ASVAB page names the line score General Technical, and its Psychological Operations page says GT for the same kind of requirement.
The goarmy.com Officer Candidate School page lists citizenship, an age range of 19 to 32, clearance eligibility, a bachelor's degree by commissioning and no more than 6 years of active service, but no GT figure. The Washington Guard page is the one that names 110, so ask a recruiter whether your component uses the same line. The marines.com officer requirements page states no GT number at all.
Enlisted jobs use GT too. The goarmy.com ASVAB page lists General Technical as one of its career categories, says it requires high Verbal Expression and Arithmetic Reasoning scores, and gives the Stryker Systems Maintainer (91S) as an example. Each job's cut scores live on its own listing and change with the Army's needs. The guides to Army jobs by ASVAB score and Marine Corps jobs by ASVAB score collect the job-level numbers each Service publishes.
Take a score sheet with AR 52, WK 56, PC 53 and MC 50. First, VE: 0.654918 x 56 is 36.68, 0.405617 x 53 is 21.50, and subtracting 3.03 leaves 55.15, which rounds to 55.
For the Army, AR plus VE is 52 + 55 = 107. Multiply by 1.074292 to get 114.95, subtract 7.44 and you have 107.51, which rounds to a GT of 108. That clears the 107 listed for Civil Affairs and the 105 for the Ranger Regiment but sits 2 points short of 110. For the Marine Corps, AR plus MC plus VE is 52 + 50 + 55 = 157. Multiply by 0.755294 to get 118.58, subtract 13.29 and you have 105.29, a Marine GT of 105.
Two standard score points on Arithmetic Reasoning reach 110. The same two points on Word Knowledge do not, because WK reaches GT only through VE. On the Marine scale the same sheet has further to go: a Marine GT of 110 needs an AR plus MC plus VE sum of 163, 6 points more than this sheet shows, and Mechanical Comprehension can supply some of them.
The AFQT composite is AR + MK + 2 x VE, converted to a percentile with the report's Table 2.5 (the AFQT guide walks through that conversion). GT uses AR and VE but leaves out Mathematics Knowledge. That one difference is enough to pull the two scores far apart.
Applicant B beats Applicant A by 22 percentile points on the AFQT, on the strength of an MK of 72. Applicant A clears the 110 that Special Forces lists, and Applicant B is 12 points short of it, because MK does not count toward GT. A strong AFQT can hide a GT problem, and a modest AFQT can sit beside a GT good enough for officer programs.
Three subtests feed the Army GT: AR, WK and PC. They do not count equally. Per standard score point, AR adds about 1.07 points to Army GT, WK about 0.70 and PC about 0.44. Because VE is rounded, a single point of WK or PC sometimes adds nothing at all.
That makes Arithmetic Reasoning the first stop. AR is word problems: rates, percentages, ratios, averages and multistep setups, not formal algebra. The Arithmetic Reasoning guide lists the problem types that come up. Word Knowledge is next, and it rewards steady vocabulary work over weeks rather than a cram the night before. Paragraph Comprehension comes last: it carries the least weight per point, and the computer test gives it 10 scored items against 15 each for AR and WK.
If you plan to join the Marine Corps, add Mechanical Comprehension. It sits inside the Marine GT with the same unit weight as AR and VE, so a point of MC counts as much there as a point of AR.
The AR, WK and PC work also lifts your AFQT, so GT study and AFQT study overlap heavily. Retest when practice scores show a real gain: the Army's ASVAB page says your most recent score is the one used, not your highest.
Soldiers who need higher scores than their enlistment ASVAB gave them take the Armed Forces Classification Test, which produces new composite scores. The Tennessee Military Department's Army Personnel Testing page, citing AR 611-5, sets out the Army National Guard rules.
Army education centers also run classes to raise GT. AR 621-5, the Army Continuing Education System regulation dated 19 March 2026, groups them under Functional Academic Skills Training (FAST). Two of its four programs, the Basic Skills Education Program and General Technical improvement, are open to Soldiers with a GT below 110, a GT below what a specific military goal requires, or a wish to improve their academic skills.
Both run during duty hours. Length is set locally, but a course must include at least 40 hours of instruction and post-testing, and education centers may use the TABE Level M test before and after it.
The regulation says commanders should enroll Soldiers who need higher ASVAB and AFCT composite scores for a military goal, and it lets Soldiers refer themselves. It also recommends testing Soldiers with a GT of 100 or below within 30 days of reaching their first duty station. Class schedules vary by installation, so start with your education counselor.
Marines also retest through the AFCT, under Marine Corps orders and messages rather than the Army rules above. Those documents could not be opened for this guide, so ask your career planner or base education office about waiting periods and the authorization you need before scheduling.