By Ashley Prince, Nursing Student and ThriveAP Contributor
I dreaded the HESI Exit Exam. DREADED. It was one of the last hurdles I had to jump through to earn my BSN, and my nursing school mandates a minimum score of 900 to pass. I’d heard horror stories of the HESI- students taking three, four attempts to pass, missing the target score by 3 points etc., making me wonder how a 900 was even possible.
Months in advance, I decided to take on the HESI head on. It was a valiant effort- I bought the HESI NCLEX-RN* review book from Amazon, set a goal to do 25 practice questions a night and read a chapter a week. A few weeks later . . . chapter one was still on my ‘to do’ list. At the time of the test, I wasn’t even a quarter of the way through the book, and it had been days since I had done a single review question. I felt unprepared and was in full panic mode- so my 964 score was a massive surprise. How exactly did I pull it off?
Apparently I was more prepared than I thought. I paid attention throughout the year, and actually remembered some of the things the profs said, so instead of relearning concepts I just reviewed them those rare moments I did study.
Who was I kidding when I said I was going to read (and highlight!) that whole review book. From what I got through it seems great, but I don’t have the patience for something like that. So when I wanted to study, I did practice questions- a bunch of great online ones came with the HESI book, and I used my NCLEX RN Mastery Review* app and occasionally the Lipponcott Q&A* book. I found it much easier and productive to run through 50 questions than try to read 5 pages on CHF.
Some HESI hints- what was on the test kind of surprised me, so here are a few tips about what I saw:
And if you don’t pass, who cares! That first try can be a kick in the butt to get studying, or show you exactly where you need to spend time- no worries!
*Not sponsored