everynowandthen,
As PN suggested, aptitude tests are largely about innate skills, but that's not to say you can't hone what skills you already have. No doubt there are books out there dealing with aptitude testing and they might be useful in terms of general mental agility. From what I can remember all those years ago, coordination was probably the bit I found hardest.
If your son has a games console, that might help some on the coordination front - I'm sure there has been plenty of research done discussing how games consoles can improve hand-eye coordination. But that is just one part of the tests. Many people find the maths and capacity tests hard - I found them to be easier, but then I had just come from a numerate postgrad science degree.
Your son should improve his ability to deal with speed / distance / time calculations - they are a big part of not just the aptitudes, but the rest of the selection procedure. There are short cuts e.g. x mph = y minutes per mile and knowing those off by heart makes life easier. Also knowing some maths short cuts will make it easier to recognise right / wrong answers in multiple choice tests e.g. odd no. x even no. = even no, X per cent of Y is the same as Y per cent of X etc. And the ability to cope with remembering increasingly long strings of random numbers will be a handy skill to have.
But don't just focus on aptitides; personal qualities are vital and without them, scoring off the charts means nothing. A friend of mine now flies civvie airliners out of London City because although he was a natural pilot, he wasn't considered to have the right officer qualities. The same applies for NCO aircrew - almost more so. They will come in half way up the non-commissioned rank range and go straight into the WOs' & Sgts' Mess at 20/21 whilst many others have had to slog their way through 20 years to make it there; therefore they will be expected to live up to the standards of a SNCO from the outset rather than learning and growing into the rank.
Last edited by Melchett01; 23rd Aug 2012 at 23:47.