What the Hondros Hesi Entrance Exam Actually Tests
The HESI (Health Education Systems, Inc.) entrance exam is used by a lot of nursing programs, including Hondros College, to screen applicants before they're admitted. It's not a single standardized test like the TEAS. Each school can customize which sections they require and how much weight they give each part. So what Hondros requires may differ slightly from what another branch of the same school requires. The exam typically covers vocabulary, grammar, math, reading comprehension, and biology. Some programs also include a chemistry section or a general science portion. The exact layout depends on what your campus requests from you.
Hondros Hesi Entrance Exam: What to Expect
I've helped people prepare for this exam through several nursing program cycles, and the most common mistake I see is treating it like a generic practice quiz and not realizing the sections are adaptive in length and difficulty depending on how you answer earlier questions. That means doing well on the first few questions actually makes the later ones harder. Some people interpret that as a sign they're performing well. It's not always that straightforward. Here's how I approach it practically. Start with the vocabulary section. It usually has around 40 to 70 words. Most of them are medical-adjacent terms you'll see in coursework anyway. Words like "ubiquitous," "contraindication," "homeostasis," and "metabolism" show up repeatedly. Flashcards with spaced repetition work better than re-reading lists. I had a student once who only memorized the first half of her list and bombed the second half on test day because she assumed she'd remember the rest. She didn't. Switching to Anki for the last week raised her score from roughly the 60th percentile to the 85th. The grammar section tests comma usage, subject-verb agreement, sentence structure, and punctuation. It's not tricky if you know basic rules, but the time pressure catches people off guard. I usually tell students to practice with timed grammar quizzes, not just read about grammar rules. Doing five practice quizzes under a real timer felt weird to one student at first. He finished in half the time afterward and made significantly fewer errors.
Math is where most applicants lose points unnecessarily. The HESI A2 math section covers fractions, decimals, ratios, proportions, percentages, and basic algebra. You need to be comfortable converting between forms quickly. One edge case that trips people up: the exam sometimes asks for answers in a specific format. If it says "round to the nearest hundredth" and you enter three decimal places, the system marks it wrong even though your answer is technically correct. I learned this the hard way when a student of mine got the right numerical answer but failed the question because she typed 0.333 instead of 0.33. The workaround was simply to highlight the rounding instructions before starting each section and keep them in view the whole time. Biology covers cells, genetics, body systems, and basic anatomy. The reading comprehension passages are straightforward college-level material. You don't need to be a biology major to do well here. Just make sure you can identify main ideas and supporting details quickly. Practice with passage questions from old SAT or ACT reading sections, and you'll cover about 80 percent of what shows up. The scoring threshold varies by program, but Hondros generally looks for a composite score around 75 percent or higher across the sections they require. Some faculty members say 70 is acceptable depending on other application strengths. You'll find different numbers online depending on which campus and which year you ask, so the safest target is 80 or above if you can manage it.
Get the Full Details
If you want to find the official Hondros Hesi Entrance Exam information, the best starting point is the admissions page on the specific Hondros College website you're applying to. They list which sections are required and often link directly to the Hogan Assessment or Elsevier platform where you schedule and take the exam. Don't rely on third-party forums for the exact section list. Those get outdated fast. The school's own page is the only reliable source for what your application cycle requires. A couple of things that nobody tells you about preparation: the exam is almost always taken through the Hogan Testing platform, which has its own interface. Navigation is simple, but the timer is strict and runs per section. You cannot pause a section once it starts. I had a student who spent two minutes stuck on a single vocabulary question, ran out of time before finishing the section, and lost points on questions she actually knew because she never got to them. Practicing with a full simulated run on the Hogan platform itself cut that problem out for her. Another counter-intuitive point is that cramming the week before usually doesn't help much. The vocabulary and biology content is cumulative. If you haven't reviewed the material in weeks, a five-day sprint will flatten your retention. Two weeks of light daily review beats three days of marathon studying for this particular exam. Your brain needs the spacing effect to lock in medical terminology and math procedures.
Also, the exam has a known weakness: the reading comprehension section sometimes includes passages where the answer isn't explicitly stated in the text. You have to infer it from context. This feels unfair to people used to standardized tests with clearly marked answers. The workaround is to treat every answer choice like a claim that needs textual support. If you can't point to a line that justifies it, it's probably wrong, even if it sounds reasonable. For study resources, the official HESI A2 study guide from Elsevier is the most accurate. Third-party prep books are fine for extra practice, but they sometimes drift from the actual question style. YouTube walkthroughs of the Hogan platform interface are worth watching too, mainly so you aren't surprised by the layout on test day. One more thing: make sure you know whether your campus requires the HESI A2 or just a subset of its sections. Some applicants show up prepared for everything, waste hours studying sections they never get tested on, and still underprepare for the parts that count. A quick email to the admissions office asking which sections are mandatory will save you several hours of study time.
