What is the HESI?

Many people have problems with this test. Sometimes versions of it are used from one term to another as a hurdle and to determine who will graduate at the end of a program. Personally, I would try to avoid any school that uses it to prevent students from graduating. One should definitely find out what the school's policy on this is before they begin a program. You will find a lot of controversy surrounding schools that use the test to prevent students from graduating.

The HESIs are what used to be known as the "NLN exams" or "NLN challenge exams" (if you're a long-time diploma nurse, you may have encountered them by one of those names when you were in school). There are a whole bunch of HESIs -- there are exams for each of the different specialty areas, and there are several different med-surg exams, and, apparently, there's at least one comprehensive HESI that is supposed to be somewhat comparable to the NCLEX -- a lot of schools use that at the end of the program to evaluate how likely you are to pass the NCLEX. Some schools use that just to provide useful information to the students, to help guide their NCLEX preparation (showing them in what subject areas they may be weak), and some schools use it as a sort of final exam -- if you don't pass the final HESI, you don't graduate and get your degree, regardless of how well you did in all your classes. That's where the controversy comes in.

I'm not having any success imagining why a BSN completion program would want you to take a HESI (since you're already licensed and practicing). I wonder if maybe there's a HESI version out there that is now being used as an entrance exam for BSN completion programs???

I would encourage you to contact the school and get the specifics directly from them. In my experience (as a student and teaching in nursing programs), the exams have to be proctored at an official site and I've only run into schools giving them themselves. I doubt it's something you could do on your own and then submit the results to the school, but things change so often now in nursing and nursing education that I could easily be wrong about that.

Best wishes!