TEAS...Does it help you or does it ruin you?

"Fair"ness has nothing to do with the price of tea in China, and not with NS applications, either.

For good, ill, or indifference, a "satisfactory" score on the TEAS is a requirement for very many (not all) nursing schools. (Each school determines what satisfactory is for them.)

That's the way it is. You're perfectly free to bemoan the way things are, but this is unlikely, I think, to be productive.

Is the TEAS really a test of essential academic skills? Of course not. It is a test of certain areas of knowledge, and of the ability to apply that knowledge to new questions.

Besides:

1) Many nursing schools apparently feel the TEAS tests some attributes of students who apply, the scoring of which they have found useful as a partial evaluation of those students;

2) The TEAS is a test which can be prepared for.

Every school is different, and we've all (I'm sure) experienced the thrill of professors who are so hard on us that we think we might not make it out with the lowest of Cs and, the exact opposite, the excitement of professors who give us the test questions and answers a week before the exam. Just because you made an A in College Algebra doesn't mean you know anything about math; your professor could have curved ridiculously and/or given you so many extra-credit assignments that you ended up with an easy A. With a standardized test the nursing school can make sure you actually know your stuff. (Though this could bring up things like test anxiety and the wording of standardized test questions, but I digress).

I'm applying to a BSN program that looks at the people who have attended their university for prerequisites first, and I think this has a lot to do with it. If they know the university first-hand, then they know if your grades are really worth something.

TEAS...Does it help you or does it ruin you?

I guess that would depend entirely on how well you do. Anyway, not every college uses TEAS.