For prospective nurses, getting into nursing school can be a challenge. In addition to several pre-requisites course that nursing school may require, many nursing education programs require nursing school candidates to an entrance exam. The two most common entrance exams are the TEAS and the HESI. This article is intended to explore the HESI exam.

The HESI exam is comprised of 325 questions covering 7-8 subject areas. The sciences covered on the HESI exam include Biology, Chemistry, Anatomy and Physiology. Math is also tested and in some cases, Physics, which is a subject that bridges between math and science. There are other subject that evalute the candiates abilty to communciate and comprehend. These include Grammar, Vocubulary, and Reading comprehension. There is also a personality assessment that is unscored. The prospective nurse has four hours to complete the exam and there are no breaks allotted. Each subject is tested, one at a time, so it becomes obvious to the test taker that they have completed, math, for instance and will then be taken smoothly to another section.

Most schools weight each section differently. For instance, one school will give greater weight to someone who scores well on A&P and Biology, while other schools may care a bit more about Chemistry, Math, and language ability. You may find that the program for which you are applying will publish how they weight their scoring system, while others do not. Most nursing school candidates can accept that they will have to demonstrate proficiency in biology, anatomy, and chemistry. Math is sometimes hard pill to swallow since most nursing student do not like math. Physics is another story. What would a nursing student need to demonstrate physics? It is a good question. And there is good news on this subject. For the most part, nursing programs opt out of the physics portion of the HESI exam, or they ignore the results. In fact, the physics portion of the HESI exam is related to other healthcare occupations that sometimes use the HESI as an entrance exam. Radiology, for instance, will likely be much more interested in physics.

The HESI exam has 50 math questions, and the candidate is expected to complete the set of questions within 50 minutes. Most of the math is quite easy focusing on basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication. More complicated questions include fraction, ratios, proportionality and use of decimals. The good new is that you can use a basic four-function calculator on the HESI exam. That will not help with fraction calculation, but a simple of knowledge of multiplying, adding, and subtracting fractions is usually suitable. Although is one of the more feared section of the exam (due to math phobia), most candidates are pleasantly surprised at how they performed. There are a few algebra questions involving the use of variables, such as x and y, but most often the HESI question provide the value for those variables and the candidate is expected to simply substitute the values, do the math, and come up with the final answer.

Conversions are also important and predominantly focus on switching between kilograms (kg) and grams (g), liters (L) and milliliters (mL), etc. Rarely is the candidate required to convert something like pounds to kilograms, but there are some minor metric/si unit conversation questions that show up from time to time.

The biology section of the HESI A2 exam, along with chemistry, anatomy and physiology, and physics (if included) has 25 questions, and the candidate is given 25 minutes to complete the section. Key areas tested within the biology section include cell structure, cellular respiration, basic knowledge of organelle function, photosynthesis, metabolism, cellular reproduction, and some basics regarding biological molecules.

Like biology, anatomy and physiology, chemistry has 25 questions and the candidate is given 25 minutes for the section. Subtopic of chemistry may include: atomic structure, nature of matter, basic stoichiometry, chemical equation and reactions, and a cursory knowledge of different types of chemical bonding, such as hydrogen, ionic, covalent bonding, to name a few.

As with the other sciences, the anatomy and physiology section of the HESI exam has 25 questions, which is to be completed in 25 minutes. Most candidates indicate that the difficulty of the A&P section of the exam is more about physiology than anatomy. As a distribution of questions, there are approximately even numbers of anatomy compared to physiology questions, but physiology questions probe the test-takers understanding or critical process whereas anatomy probes the candidate's memory of structures. The point is that a knowledge of physiology is fairly important for the HESI exam.

Many prospective nursing students will not see physics questions on the HESI exam. This because most nursing program do not require it. Nursing programs, when setting up their HESI exam profiles and can choose what sections are included and which are omitted from the HESI exam versions that their applicants take. Even when physics questions are included, they may not have any weight against the applicant should the performance be excessive low. Candidates should check with the program for which they are applying beforehand to know if they can just not sweat that section. A little less to worry about goes a long way.