Just took the HESI A2

[Avacodo94]

I was so stressed out about this test, and honestly, I didn't need to be. Having that said, I only started stressing out a day or two before I was scheduled to take the exam, since that's when I started studying. I'm a full time student who also has a job on the side so finding extra time is sometimes a tough task. For my nursing school, I needed to take Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, Grammar, Basic Math Skills, Biology, Chemistry, Anatomy & Physiology, Personality Profile, Learning Style, and finally, Critical Thinking. It's a lot, but they gave us five hours to complete it, so time was not an issue. I'm one of those people that always runs out of time but I had over an hour left when I finished. Anyways overall I got a 91 :) Here are the break downs:

READING COMPREHENSION: I got a 94. This section is pretty easy if you take the time to actually read everything. I was mentally exhausted by the time I got around to this section (you can choose which order you take the sections in) so I ended up skimming a lot of the passages, which is why I ended up missing a few problems. If you take the time, you should have no problem with passing this section. It's similar to the ACT's Reading Comprehension section but you have A LOT more time (which is arguably the only hard part about the ACT's Reading Comprehension).

VOCABULARY: I got a 98. I only studied the flashcards that students created on Quizlet and that was enough. Some of the words were ridiculously easy, others not so much but Quizlet saved me on this section.

GRAMMAR: I got an 88. I was nervous for this section since I've always found grammar to be tricky. I wasn't born in this country and even though I did most of my schooling here, grammar is a bit of a struggle. For this I skimmed over my old ACT prep books but to be honest, you either know it or you don't. Even if I would have spent weeks studying this section, I don't think I would have done significantly better.

BASIC MATH SKILLS: I got a 98. I was shocked when I saw my results. Math is not something that comes naturally to me. But this was insultingly easy. Some of the questions my 8 year old sister could even answer. BUT do study beforehand. Brush up your fraction and ratio skills and know the conversions by heart, it honestly doesn't take long to study for this section. Look up youtube videos for fraction rules if you must. Remember that a calculator is provided for every question, so if you're stumped on a fraction problem, just convert it to a decimal and do it that way, then convert the answer back to a fraction. If you get the fractions and conversions down, you'll already get at least an 80.

BIOLOGY: I got an 88. I was nervous for this one. There is so much to cover in biology, and the questions were basic, yes, but random and all over the place. Definitely crack open your old Bio book and look over the "summary" page of each chapter. Tedious? Yes, but it will help you out.

CHEMISTRY: I got a 96. Which I'm still confused about. I just got lucky in this section because I was iffy on at least half of the questions. My process of elimination skills suddenly became really good I guess. Know the basics, don't waste time knowing all the details as the questions don't go in depth too much.

ANATOMY & PHYSIOLOGY: I got a 76. I knew going in that this would be my lowest score. I had no confidence. I guessed on quite a few of the questions and was sure that I had failed but somehow I ended up with a 76. As with Biology, there is a lot of material to cover. And unlike the Chemistry section, you do need to know details. I didn't really study for this section at all, which was a mistake since I feel like I could have gotten at least an 80/85 had I reviewed the general topics a bit more. But I studied last minute and didn't carve out enough time to really absorb any information. I was overwhelmed and nothing was sticking in my brain. Make time for the science sections!

PERSONALITY PROFILE: It's a quick section that tells you what kind of personality type you have. I think that a people person is what they're looking for in the nursing field but who knows.

LEARNING STYLE: Again, not graded. Just informs you what type of learned you are.

CRITICAL THINKING: I got a 790. This section was annoying. It would describe a scenario and you'd have to decide what to do as a nurse. All the answers were correct. Yet some were more correct than others apparently. It's out of 1000 points and predicts how good of a nurse you'd be. I'm a little upset that I didn't do better but hey, the reason I'm taking this test is to get into nursing school so that I can learn to be the best nurse I can be. So I'm moving in the right direction.

Anyways, I hope this has helped at least one of you anxious future HESI Exam takers. It's really not as difficult as some people make it out to be. If you've taken most of the nursing pre-req's, you should already have a good amount of this information stored somewhere in your head. Just take it out of storage and dust off those cobwebs. GOOD LUCK!

[Michelle D-J, BSN, RN]

Congratulations on doing so well! =D

How did you find out your Critical Thinking score? When I took mine, it just said "complete"....there was no score right after I finished like all of the other sections, nor was there any on the print-out???

Anyways, glad to hear you did such a great job! (Wish I'd had Basic Math....we had Algebra!) lol

~MLDJ1970