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.
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.
My thoughts as well...what are you going to do when she gets disciplined, or denied her choice of specialty/schedule/vacation at work? There's no reason you still can't be her biggest supporter/confidant, but it's time for her to fight her own battles...
This is so bizarre that the mother is posting this and not her daughter. Frankly, I feel like that in itself is a pretty good indicator that this may be why she hasn't passed the HESI.
Please let your daughter grow and learn to work her way through challenges on her own. When I didn't pass an exam, you know what I did? I studied twice as hard for the next one and succeeded on my own. I would be mortified if my parents were trying to fight my battles for me. Insinuating that you (the mother) are going to fight the school on this is way overstepping your daughter's boundaries. If other students pass the HESI and move on to NCLEX, so can your daughter, if you give her the space to figure it out on her own.
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.
The school has the right to withhold NCLEX testing privileges. They cannot withhold her from receiving the degree if she technically passed the classes, but if remediation is deemed necessary, they can reserve testing privileges until her scores are higher. This is perfectly legal, and frankly, better for the students, as you can only take the NCLEX a certain number of times with a mandatory wait period in between (45 days, I believe). Making her remediate for a better score is saving her time and money instead of just letting her fail the NCLEX. Passing a class and actually understanding the material are two very different things.
My thoughts as well...what are you going to do when she gets disciplined, or denied her choice of specialty/schedule/vacation at work? There's no reason you still can't be her biggest supporter/confidant, but it's time for her to fight her own battles...
Considering many parents are very instrumental on paying for their children's education, there is nothing wrong with offering support and finding out more information. That is all the mother is asking for.
She knew for a year that passing the HESI was crucial to being able to take NCLEX. There is nothing to appeal. She needs to deal with the consequences and advise her future employer of the set-back.
Schools are judged by the BON for their NCLEX pass rates. It is not in the school's best interest to allow graduates who did not pass their Exit exam take NCLEX.
You are actually wrong. In most BSN programs, she would already be a year in before they changed the rules. Colleges and Universities cannot do that...don't assume they can.
If schools have a valid curriculum they should not worry about an exit exam.
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.
--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.
States like New York have passed legislation that disallow schools manipulating the statistics. Let's just call it what it is...statistical manipulation.
What you don't mention is at school that use a HESI as an evaluation tools, there are students that don't do well every single year that pass the NCLEX on the first attempt...so why is that not taken into account???
So your pass rates didn't go up....you still had the same quality of program, you shafted students and refused to allow them to test to skew the results. This gives NEW students a falsified evaluation of the quality of your nursing program.
When students see a pass rate, why don't you start posting on your school of nursing website, "We had 75 students that completed the program, but 64 that were actually awarded degrees and allowed to take the NCLEX. Of those 64, we had a 98 to 100% pass rate". I mean...why hide it? Be transparent if you are so confident about your program.
States like New York have passed legislation that disallow schools manipulating the statistics. Let's just call it what it is...statistical manipulation.
What you don't mention is at school that use a HESI as an evaluation tools, there are students that don't do well every single year that pass the NCLEX on the first attempt...so why is that not taken into account???
So your pass rates didn't go up....you still had the same quality of program, you shafted students and refused to allow them to test to skew the results. This gives NEW students a falsified evaluation of the quality of your nursing program.
When students see a pass rate, why don't you start posting on your school of nursing website, "We had 75 students that completed the program, but 64 that were actually awarded degrees and allowed to take the NCLEX. Of those 64, we had a 98 to 100% pass rate". I mean...why hide it? Be transparent if you are so confident about your program.
Without HESI, I probably wouldn't have passed the NCLEX as it encouraged me to study harder. I LOVED it, it offers remediation and it tells you what your weak points are and what you should focus on which is different for EVERY student. It encourages accountability because at the end of the day, in every nursing school there are going to be some amazing professors, terrible ones, and some who's teaching style does not suit you personally but it is each student's responsibility to do what they have to do to acquire the necessary knowledge to be a safe nurse and HESI is a great tool to identify those knowledge gaps.
Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
5 hours ago, Jory said:
You are actually wrong. In most BSN programs, she would already be a year in before they changed the rules. Colleges and Universities cannot do that...don't assume they can.
If schools have a valid curriculum they should not worry about an exit exam.
Yes, the part that mystifies me is that the school awarded her a degree but then got in the way of her taking the licensing exam. If they need to see likelihood of her passing the NCLEX, shouldn't they ascertain that before conferring the degree?
My school administered NLN exams as a condition of graduating from the program. It would have seemed a dirty deal if they let us graduate and then prevent us taking the licensing exam.
Specializes in Pediatric Nursing and Educational Technology.
15 hours ago, Jory said:
States like New York have passed legislation that disallow schools manipulating the statistics. Let's just call it what it is...statistical manipulation.
What you don't mention is at school that use a HESI as an evaluation tools, there are students that don't do well every single year that pass the NCLEX on the first attempt...so why is that not taken into account???
So your pass rates didn't go up....you still had the same quality of program, you shafted students and refused to allow them to test to skew the results. This gives NEW students a falsified evaluation of the quality of your nursing program.
When students see a pass rate, why don't you start posting on your school of nursing website, "We had 75 students that completed the program, but 64 that were actually awarded degrees and allowed to take the NCLEX. Of those 64, we had a 98 to 100% pass rate". I mean...why hide it? Be transparent if you are so confident about your program.
All graduates of a nursing program are CAPABLE of passing the NCLEX. The problem is that not all graduates are READY to take the exam. Taking the NCLEX is its own thing. Nursing faculty may try to make NCLEX-like questions but don't have resources or training to develop an exam of equivalent quality. Taking test prep for NCLEX is just a part of the whole nursing education.
The NCLEX exam only tests if a beginning nurse can make safe and prudent clinical decisions at an entry level of practice. There is much more to being a nurse and your education has to get all of that into the curriculum as well.
Nursing schools are not manipulating statistics. A nursing school degree alone does not mean you are ready for NCLEX. The fact that graduates with various GPAs can pass only proves that the education was adequate in teaching nursing students to be nurses.
Delaying a graduate from taking the NCLEX until they can show mastery in taking the NCLEX is no different than holding a junior student from progressing to the senior year if they don't show mastery of pediatric nursing or some other course at that level. The nursing prep companies have data that show which readiness test scores correlate with passing the NCLEX (i.e., mastery of the licensing exam).
There is nothing false or misleading about the passing statistics. Most graduates do well enough on the readiness test to go right to NCLEX. The school would do no favors for anyone by permitting the graduates who did not pass the readiness exam to go ahead and take the test. While they are possibly ready we have enough evidence to show that dedicated test prep can improve those odds.
Nursing schools still have an issue with how long you keep a graduate from NCLEX if they keep failing the readiness test? My school requires up to 3 tries, and then the graduate is permitted to go to NCLEX. Our results show that those students pass about 50% of the time. Not great, but the policy has improved the overall school passing rate since this situation of repeated readiness test failures has been very rare.
There is much more to being a nurse than passing the NCLEX. A nurse who only went to a program that focused on passing the exam would not be sufficiently educated.
All graduates of a nursing program are CAPABLE of passing the NCLEX. The problem is that not all graduates are READY to take the exam. Taking the NCLEX is its own thing. Nursing faculty may try to make NCLEX-like questions but don't have resources or training to develop an exam of equivalent quality. Taking test prep for NCLEX is just a part of the whole nursing education.
There are TONS of resources available. More like oceans. They just need to look for them.
The NCLEX exam only tests if a beginning nurse can make safe and prudent clinical decisions at an entry level of practice. There is much more to being a nurse and your education has to get all of that into the curriculum as well.
The purpose of the NCLEX is to see if the beginning nurse can make safe and prudent clinical decisions--not the HESI. It is an evaluation tool. One the NLN does NOT support (not just HESI, any exit exam).
Nursing schools are not manipulating statistics. A nursing school degree alone does not mean you are ready for NCLEX. The fact that graduates with various GPAs can pass only proves that the education was adequate in teaching nursing students to be nurses.
Considering 80% of all colleges and universities DO NOT use an exit exam, I think it is safe to say an exit exam is not necessary. You can call it "not manipulating statistics" but if you hide your true NCLEX eligibility rates and that artificially trends your pass-rates up...that is the definition fo manipulating statistics.
You just destroyed your own argument...considering students with varying GPAs can pass the NCLEX...that devalues the purpose of an exit exam.
Delaying a graduate from taking the NCLEX until they can show mastery in taking the NCLEX is no different than holding a junior student from progressing to the senior year if they don't show mastery of pediatric nursing or some other course at that level. The nursing prep companies have data that show which readiness test scores correlate with passing the NCLEX (i.e., mastery of the licensing exam).
Passing a course is not the same as passing a program. We don't have exit exams for medical technology students, pharmacy students, teachers, and tons of other professions that require state or national exams in order to practice.
Guess who is doing the statistics to show this correlation? THE COMPANY'S MARKETING DEPARTMENT SELLING THE SCHOOL HE PRODUCT.
There is nothing false or misleading about the passing statistics. Most graduates do well enough on the readiness test to go right to NCLEX. The school would do no favors for anyone by permitting the graduates who did not pass the readiness exam to go ahead and take the test. While they are possibly ready we have enough evidence to show that dedicated test prep can improve those odds.
Yes, there is everything misleading about them. Which is why states like New York banned exit exams for nursing students. Prep your students correctly and you won't have to worry about the NCLEX.
Passing the NCLEX is also more highly correlated when taken closer to your graduation date. There are many programs that have a 100% pass rate that have NO EXIT EXAM. So how do you explain their success? It's because they have a quality program.
Nursing schools still have an issue with how long you keep a graduate from NCLEX if they keep failing the readiness test? My school requires up to 3 tries, and then the graduate is permitted to go to NCLEX. Our results show that those students pass about 50% of the time. Not great, but the policy has improved the overall school passing rate since this situation of repeated readiness test failures has been very rare.
They haven't improved the overall pass rate...they have improved the pass rate by controlling who takes the test---did you take statistics in nursing school? If you didn't, I suggest you do.
There is much more to being a nurse than passing the NCLEX. A nurse who only went to a program that focused on passing the exam would not be sufficiently educated.
Considering I am an advanced practice nurse, I think I know this. But I appreciate your insight. But you are just as wrong as you can be with your assessment.
.thumb.jpg.c85cabd884822a09e16ab5f1e7b1e5d0.jpg){kind=small}
Caprica6
72 Posts
My thoughts as well...what are you going to do when she gets disciplined, or denied her choice of specialty/schedule/vacation at work? There's no reason you still can't be her biggest supporter/confidant, but it's time for her to fight her own battles...