Student Not Eligible for NCLEX

Nurses Nurse Beth

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Dear Nurse Beth,

My daughter graduated with a BSN. Transcript shows degree awarded. However, she didn’t make the school's required minimum on the HESI. Now the school has decided to administer ANOTHER test in a month, which will interfere with her job offer. At what point does something give and the school no longer hold the control to hold not releasing graduates to sit for the NCLEX?

Dear Daughter Held Back,

Most nursing schools require their students to pass the HESI exam prior to graduation. The HESI exam is a valid predictor of the student's ability to successfully pass the NCLEX.

The HESI exam consists of 150 questions and is designed to test critical thinking and application.

Nursing schools have the right to hold students to conditions of successful completion of the nursing program. Students who do not successfully meet requirements of completion are not eligible for the NCLEX.

The best thing for your daughter to do is prepare to successfully pass the test.

A BSN has no value to employers without an RN behind it.

Her job offer is certainly contingent on her passing the NCLEX, and the first step towards passing the NCLEX is passing the required exit exam. At some hospitals, the applicant's exit exam scores are looked at along with their GPA when hiring.

In other words, although you could choose to fight and appeal the school's decision, your energy is better spent on encouraging and helping your daughter pass. There are a lot of helpful study aids out there.

Best wishes,

Nurse Beth

Author, "Your Last Nursing Class: How to Land Your First Nursing Job"...and your next!

Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.

I find it pretty absurd that you are on here and not your daughter. She is an adult. She has to want it more than you do.

15 Votes

Very interesting topic. I wasn't aware that certain nursing schools require their nursing graduates to pass HESI exams before they are allowed to take the NCLEX. I probably wouldn't attend one of these schools. All of the NCLEX pass rates are easily found online. (probably on the BON websites) If given a choice, I would pick a school with a high (first time taking the test) NCLEX pass rate.

2 Votes

Right now her job offer is the least of your worries.

I'm going to add one major point:

Review the college/university catalog that corresponds with the time she entered the nursing program. These catalogs are treated as legal contracts between the school and the student.

If the HESI was required WHEN SHE ENTERED the program, they can require this before they will sign papers allowing her to take the NCLEX exam.

If it was NOT mentioned when she entered the program, schools are generally not permitted to change graduation requirements along the way. This is a valid argument for them to sign papers to allow her to take the NCLEX.

I am 100% against schools being allowed to do this. Mainly because the purpose of Boards of Nursing requiring certain pass rates is to identify and close down substandard nursing programs. Requiring exit exams for graduation artificially skews these numbers and makes their pass rate seem higher than it actually is.

Get a Saunders NCLEX review guide, that is all that she needs. I don't like ATI review materials. I don't think they help at all.

3 Votes
On 6/13/2019 at 2:42 AM, caliotter3 said:

Then whatever is in the policies about the school’s right to change curriculum or other requirements would prevail. My BSN program changed the entire curriculum one semester at a time with enough differences to make it ‘impossible’ to repeat or remediate. Each class was warned accordingly and it was made clear at which points a failure or break would cause a student not to graduate. There were people who got left by the wayside not always because of academic failure. Her best bet is still to study and pass the exam. Getting an attorney to fight the system is not a guaranteed way to get what she wants without giving the school what it wants. Surely the nursing program has a retention coordinator who is willing to work with those in this unfortunate situation. She should seek assistance. It is not in the school’s best interest for her not to get licensed.

This is incorrect. Once you start the program, they cannot change the requirements. They can change them in favor of the students, but not the other way around. This is to prevent colleges from getting students in so deep into a program they can never finish.

The HESI specifically has been challenged in court. There were two students (I think from Oklahoma, I could be wrong) where the HESI was added half way through their nursing program. They did not pass after two attempts and the college refused to confer their degree.

The students sued the school and the court sided with the students.

1 Votes
On 6/13/2019 at 10:25 PM, JadedCPN said:

Might also want to consider that if she can’t pass the HESI, there’s a chance she won’t pass the NCLEX anyway. Either way she needs to take accountability and do what she can on her end to improve and meet the requirements.

There is actually no correlation between passing the HESI and NCLEX. This is one of the controversies of the exam. There are schools that administer the HESI to evaluate their own program, but do not require a passing grade in order to graduate/sit for NCLEX and many students that do poorly go on to do well on the NCLEX.

0 Votes
On 6/12/2019 at 10:45 AM, Fastpitcher said:

Actually it wasn’t in the original handbook. There was no mention of it Its not listed in any of the original requirements upon entering the program. It wasn’t even mentioned until the last year of the school had begun. But again, she’s already graduated. I’d think that if her transcript showed an incomplete then it would be more of a valid thing. We will see how it goes from here. Surely there is an end in sight and she can move on to the NCLEX and life.

This is your ticket right there. I would call the Dean and explain this. If your daughter fails the HESI again and they won't sign papers for her to take her NCLEX, I would get an attorney. I'm not even kidding.

2 Votes
Specializes in Surgical, quality,management.
10 minutes ago, Jory said:

This is your ticket right there. I would call the Dean and explain this. If your daughter fails the HESI again and they won't sign papers for her to take her NCLEX, I would get an attorney. I'm not even kidding.

What??? This is the students MOTHER on here. Laen mowing parenting to the extreme. This student is hoping to work in a career where she is accountable for patients lives but her mother is on an internet forum researching how to fix things for her daughter. How about the daughter putting on her big girl pants and sorting out her own issues?

8 Votes
On 6/13/2019 at 11:50 PM, DaCatsMeow said:

Bottom line after working hard for my nursing degree, getting past an exit exam was the least of my worries. I just chalked it up to my program wanting to continue to be a thorn in my side for a few more months.

And everyone can thank their obsession with CCNE and ACEN for this. We've let these two boards create a monster, where it's vital that people graduate from their accredited schools if they want to have most good jobs, but those schools can't hold those accreditations without having a high enough pass rate on the NCLEX.

It's not about any of us, it's making sure that the people who might fail and make them look bad never get to take the test. It's their way of making their numbers look better so that they have something to market to take in more students. It basically lets them escape some of the responsibility of the teachers to do a good job at being teachers.

1 Votes
Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
1 minute ago, tonyl1234 said:

And everyone can thank their obsession with CCNE and ACEN for this. We've let these two boards create a monster, where it's vital that people graduate from their accredited schools if they want to have most good jobs, but those schools can't hold those accreditations without having a high enough pass rate on the NCLEX.

It's not just accreditation the schools have to worry about. A low NCLEX pass rate will result in the program being placed on probation by the state BON. If they don't improve, the BON will revoke their approval and graduates (if the program doesn't shut down) will not be eligible to sit for NCLEX. The local program in my community was placed on probation for 2 years by the state due to low NCLEX pass rate. Had they not improved it and the program's approval was revoked, their graduates would not be able to be nurses. I know you have an axe to grind about accreditation based on your posting history, but there's a bigger picture.

2 Votes
1 hour ago, Jory said:

This is incorrect. Once you start the program, they cannot change the requirements. They can change them in favor of the students, but not the other way around. This is to prevent colleges from getting students in so deep into a program they can never finish.

The HESI specifically has been challenged in court. There were two students (I think from Oklahoma, I could be wrong) where the HESI was added half way through their nursing program. They did not pass after two attempts and the college refused to confer their degree.

The students sued the school and the court sided with the students.

Don't presume to call false the FACTS that happened at a school or in any other matter when you were not present to witness what actually happened.

2 Votes

Absolutely fascinating. Bring on the comments. I had no idea that certain nursing schools had so many pre- NCLEX test taking requirements. Our nursing students deserve the best education possible, for their own personal fulfillment, and the sake of all of their future patients.

To those of you who find yourselves in this predicament, study long and hard. Find a mentor or two who can help you with your test taking skills. Work in a hospital setting until you pass your NCLEX; every little bit of hospital experience you get will help prepare you for your career as a nurse. And don't give up on your dream. Nursing is my passion and I have never regretted choosing this profession, even after 35 years.

1 Votes
Specializes in Pediatric Nursing and Educational Technology.

As a long time nursing educator here are some things that all graduates need to realize. This is based on my experience of implementing a readiness test passing policy at my school.

--Getting a degree is just one part of being eligible for NCLEX. In most states the nursing school must certify to the Board of Nursing the graduate is eligible. This allows a graduate to be denied permission for the exam for low prep test readiness scores and even their belief the student is not morally fit to be a nurse.

--The readiness tests by HESI, ATI, and Kaplan among others have data to show that their readiness scores correlate with a higher probability of passing NCLEX than the non-prepped graduate. Nursing schools are under tremendous pressure to have high first-time NCLEX passing rates. Accreditation and recruiting new students depend on it. Schools have latched onto these readiness tests as a way to help keep a high passing rate.

--My school did Kaplan for many years. They had a readiness score of 65 which indicated a 95% chance of passing. We did not have at that time a policy to prevent a student from taking the NCLEX so I collected 5 years of data. The students at my school who got 63 or higher passed at a 100% rate. When the score was below 60 the chances of passing dropped to 50%. This is why we started to keep students from taking the NCLEX. Since the policy went into place our passing rate went from 88-92% to 98-100%. Our competition in the area has seen the same increases with these policies.

--If a nursing school is keeping a student from taking the test then smartest thing is to work harder on passing the test, rather than fighting the policy. You may win the battle but lose the war if you go and take the NCLEX when you're not ready.

--I feel bad for the student who cannot take a job offer but that is why the employer made the offer contingent on passing. Most employers will still hire the graduate once the license is achieved. Even if not, you could probably get a job there later after working somewhere else and gaining experience.

5 Votes
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