VOWS are the Voluntary Off World Assessment Exams, a battery of tests that determined whether a human's suitability to serve in one of the mercenary companies.
The tests consist of five mental and four physical categories. Overall, candidates received scores from 1167 to 233, with physical attributes consisting of 667 of that result and mental ones covering the remaining 500. Mercenary companies generally set 900 as the floor for potential recruits.