Nursing student looking for advice from RN's

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Are there any RN's out there that failed a HESI Specialty exam? I'm a 4 qtr nursing student with a 4.0 GPA. I took my Clinical Concept II HESI and my pharmacology HESI both today. I have a 96 in my clinical concept class but only made a 747 on my HESI, in pharmacology I have a 95 and made a 982 on the HESI so I passed that one.

My nursing school said since I passed the Clinical Concept class with an A, I would just audit and retake the HESI. I'm feeling very discouraged though because I have classmates that are only making the minimal (79.5) to pass and took the HESI today and passed with grades in the 900... I'm contemplating quitting school, I feel like a nurse should know the info and by not passing the HESI I obviously don't. I'm wondering if there are any RN's who have been in this situation and if they have any suggestions.

Thanks for any help!

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Specializes in Psych.

Some of my classmates failed HESI tests from time to time. Almost 3 years after graduating, I can't tell you how useless these tests are to every day practice. Please, don't let one stupid test affect your career! No dropping out! Just keep jumping through hoops until you are done.

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Thank you for the encouragement. I'm going into my 6th quarter so I've been so busy studying and I apologize for the late response. Still stressed out but I keep trucking....

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The HESI is more of a measure of how well you can speak the NCLEX language. You can know all the material but still get tricked by the questions. I recommend doing a lot of practice questions from NCLEX practice books, especially ones that have CDs so you can practice answering on the computer. I found it especially helpful to practice answering questions with a friend so that we could talk through the questions and better understand the rationales. Good luck!

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I think quitting nursing school based off of one test is premature. It just depends on the content matter when it comes to HESI. You get it or you don't. My school used HESI - I aced every HESI exam except fundamentals and community health.

I felt like crap knowing those who were barely making it aced HESI fundamentals and I barely scraped by (747 I think I got). After asking around, those who did well on HESI fundamentals did bad on the pharm test and vice versa. Weird how it works but you don't have to be perfect in everything to be a good nurse :)

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You don't quit. Part of the overall picture in who makes it vs. who doesn't in this field is stamina and picking yourself up when you fall down. Learn to accept that you will not be "perfect" 100% of the time. My school used ATI and many students got below the so called passing score of %72. I was above passing, but not perfect. When you don't do as well as you'd hoped, you study harder and maybe even ask your classmates what they did to study so that you can try something new.

Real nursing is nowhere near those tests. You will need to learn to not always be "the best" around. It would be a shame to quit at this point, and no, what you described doesn't warrant quitting by anyone's standards.

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