Parts three through five of this book provide you with targeted lessons, strategies, and review questions. If there are any significant last-minute developments – or changes or corrections to the Kaplan test prep materials in this book – we will post that information online at kaptest.com/publishing.
INTRODUCTION
Here's how the Kaplan exam breaks down, complete with the number of questions and the amount of testing time allotted to complete each one. The HESI also includes unscored questions to assess the test taker's learning style and personality profile.
ABOUT THE READING COMPREHENSION SECTION
The Passages
The Questions
ABOUT THE VOCABULARY, SPELLING, AND GRAMMAR SECTION
Vocabulary Questions
In some cases you will be asked to choose the best definition for a specific word; You may even see the word used in a sentence, which can provide contextual clues to the word's meaning. In other cases, you are asked to choose the best word to complete a sentence.
Spelling Questions
No matter which nursing exam you take, you will likely encounter an emphasis on words that are likely to be used in a nursing exam.
Grammar Questions
ABOUT THE WRITING SECTION
ABOUT THE MATHEMATICS SECTION
About the Questions
ABOUT THE SCIENCE SECTION
Although the Kaplan exam combines science questions under a single section called Science, the HESI exam breaks these areas down into several topics.
Biology Questions
Anatomy and Physiology Questions
Physical Science Questions
An Important Difference
THE NEXT STEP
PART ONE |
Strategies
The tips in this chapter are intended to help you with the nursing school entrance exam, as well as other tests you may encounter during your career.
HOW NURSING SCHOOL ENTRANCE EXAMS ARE ADMINISTERED
If Your Test Is Paper Based
It sounds simple, but it is extremely important: Do not make mistakes when filling in your answer grid. Marking your notebook with answer choices and skipped questions makes it easy to check your answer grid later to ensure that your answers are next to the correct question numbers.
If Your Test Is Computer Based
Use this strategy to make sure you've marked your grid correctly: Circle the answers in your test booklet and transfer your answers.
STRATEGIES FOR ALMOST ANY TEST
You Don’t Have to Answer the Questions in Order
Guessing Advantage
Pace Yourself
If your test does not allow you to skip and return to unanswered questions later, do not leave any question blank. Moving on will leave you more time to spend on potentially easier questions later in the test.
Keep Track of Time
When half of the time allowed has passed, you should be about halfway through the test. Start at your first skipped question and choose the best choice, then proceed methodically to the next skipped question.
Read the Question Carefully Before You Look at the Answers
For example, if the test section has 50 questions and there is a time limit of 50 minutes, spend no more than 1 minute on each question. Now choose an answer by guessing strategically: Make a note of any answer choices you have ruled out.
SELF-CARE AND DEALING WITH STRESS
Dealing with Test Stress
You can learn to control your anxiety in the same way you can control how to approach a multiple-choice question—by knowing in advance what to expect and developing strategies to deal with it. We will show you how to relieve stress and prepare mentally for the exam in five.
Sources of Test Stress
My Sources of Test Stress
My Sources of Test Stress, in Order
Taking care of the top two or three items on the list should go a long way in easing your overall test anxiety.
My Top Three Sources of Test Stress
Relaxation and Visualization
You have associated images of your special place with feelings of comfort and relaxation. You have also found a way to relax simply by visualizing your own safe and special place.
Visualize Success
The pictures can be of a special place you've already visited or one you've read about. Any feelings of fear you may have associated with the test will be replaced.
Exercise Away Your Anxiety
The more you practice relaxation and visualization, the more effective the exercise will be for you. If this makes you feel like doing it in the test room, skip this step.).
Say No to Drugs, Yes to Eating Right
Now, relax your body, one part at a time, in reverse order, starting with your toes.
Good Stress
STUDY TIMELINE FOR THE KAPLAN NURSING SCHOOL ADMISSION TEST
Now here are suggested timelines for organizing your study time if you have 6 months, 3 months, or 1 month to prepare for your nursing school entrance exam. If you are taking the Kaplan exam, feel free to look at the HESI Practice Tests (Practice Tests . Three and Four) as a way to review the information from a different angle, but remember that Practice Tests One and Two will better reflect actual fact . the test you will take.
If You Have 6 Months
Four months before the test: Study Chapter Seven, Biology Review, and Chapter Eight, Anatomy and Physiology Review. Review the chapters and learning resource sections and repeat the practice test section as necessary.
If You Have 3 Months
Study Chapter Three, Reading Comprehension; Chapter Four, Overview of Vocabulary, Spelling, and Grammar; and Chapter Five, Writing a Review. Review the Reading Comprehension and Writing sections of Practice Test One and study the answer explanations.
If You Have 1 Month
STUDY TIMELINE FOR THE HESI A2 EXAM
Take the Vocabulary and Grammar sections of Practice Test Three and study the answer explanations. Review the chapter and Learning Resources sections and repeat the practice test sections as necessary.
COUNTDOWN TO TEST DAY
3 to 10 Days Before the Test
2 Days Before the Test
The Day Before the Test
It is also important to know exactly where the test center is located, how to get there and how long it will take to get there. If you can, it's a good idea to visit your test center sometime before test day so you know what to expect—where to park, what the rooms are like, how the desks are set up, where the restrooms are, and soon.
The Morning of the Test
During the Test
He or she may be able to arrange for you to reschedule your test after it's over - when it won't cost you any time.
After the Test
PART TWO |
Diagnostic Quiz
Or do you think you'll spend more time reviewing content on South American flowering plants? Be sure to focus your studies on the knowledge areas covered by the test you are taking.).
Nursing School Entrance Exams
Do you think you will spend a lot of time reviewing color swatches and practicing recognizing the differences between green and purple. On the other hand, if you struggle with all the science questions, you should spend more of your time reviewing Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, and Chapter Nine.
Diagnostic Quiz Answer Sheet
Reading Comprehension
While these relative strengths and weaknesses can be attributed to the unique and complex structure of the human brain, neuroscientists have also traced these characteristics to the human brain's remarkable flexibility, which researchers call plasticity. The author's comparisons between the human brain and that of other animals are intended to:.
Vocabulary and Spelling 1. Resignation most nearly means
In a certain school, if the ratio of teachers to students is 1 to 10, which of the following could be the total number of teachers to students. If the call lasted x minutes and x is an integer greater than 3, which of the following expresses the cost of the call in dollars.
Science
Which of the following is the site for the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide through thin membrane walls. Which of the following indicates the relative randomness of molecules in the three states of matter.
Diagnostic Quiz Answer Key
Answers and Explanations
Drawn” (B) fits the primary definition of the word traced, but not the context in the passage. The number of books borrowed in January is therefore the total number of books borrowed in the first 6 months of the year.
Interpreting the Results of the Diagnostic Quiz
Now take more time to list the areas of the test that you need to improve on, that you are simply bad at, or that you failed in. By looking at your strengths and weaknesses, you can know the areas you don't need to worry about and those that will require extra.
PART THREE |
Verbal and Language Review
In turn, the strategies section of this book shows you how to handle the kinds of reading comprehension questions you're likely to encounter on your nursing school entrance exam. Don't forget to complete the review questions at the end of this chapter to make sure you've understood everything you've read so far.
READING COMPREHENSION LESSON
Mark It Up
Focus on the First Third of the Passage
Use the Paragraph Topics
Don’t Worry If You Get Stuck
In general, if you jot down paragraph topics, you should have a good idea of where to find the details.
How to Read a Passage
You want to get an idea of the general layout; For more information, please return to the passage. They often provide the questions for you or tell you exactly where to find them.
Kinds of Reading Comprehension Questions
These questions can give you a line reference, a clue to where in the passage to find your answer. Beware of answer choices that seem to answer the question fairly but have no meaning in the context of the passage, or that are true but refer to another part of the text.
SAMPLE QUESTIONS
The second paragraph describes a series of events that show how scientists are getting closer to creating a real invisibility cloak. The second paragraph mentions a number of different scientists and universities involved in trying to design invisibility cloaks.
READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES
Kaplan’s 5-Step Method for Reading Comprehension
Questions
- Read the Question Stem
- Locate the Material You Need
- Predict the Answer
- Scan the Answer Choices
- Select Your Answer
Eliminate answers that seem reasonable but do not make sense in the context of the passage or question. Do not choose far-fetched conclusions and make sure there is evidence for your conclusion in the passage.
Long Passage Strategies
Remember, to infer the correct answer, look at what is strongly implied in the passage. If you have more than one contender left, consider the main idea of the passage and make an educated guess.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
REVIEW ANSWERS
As a nursing student—and eventually as a nurse—correct spelling and understanding complex vocabulary will be essential aspects of your job. Therefore, nursing schools need to know that you have a good foundation of spelling and vocabulary.
VOCABULARY LESSON
Your Vocabulary
Be sure to check out the additional study aids for this chapter in the Learning Resources section of the book. If you got 10 or fewer correct, the techniques and tools in this chapter will teach you ways to improve your vocabulary and help you get the most out of words you already know.
A Vocabulary-Building Plan
Understanding the meaning of any of these parts of a word can help you get the correct definition. For example, if you know that the prefix bio- means "life", then you might be able to decode.
Personalize the Way You Study Vocabulary
Write down these words, look them up in the dictionary, and write down their definitions in a notebook. Write the word or phrase on one side of an index card and a brief definition on the other side.
Trust Your Hunches
Write down new words or word groups and run through them when you have some free time. List words in the left column and their meanings in the right column.
Try To Recall Where You’ve Heard the Word Before
Think Positive and Negative
But if you get an idea of the meaning of the word, you can probably answer some questions based on that alone. In the example below, you start by understanding the "charge" of the italicized word.
VOCABULARY STRATEGIES
And choice (A) is neither positive nor negative, which also cannot be true if you are sure the word is negative. Rankle, like irk, means "to annoy or irritate." So you should not be ranked if you do not know the exact definition of a word.
Kaplan’s 3-Step Method for Synonyms
Find the Answer Choice That Best Fits Your Definition Go through the answer choices one by one to see which one fits best
If No Choice Fits, Think of Other Definitions for the Stem Word and Go Through the Choices Again
If no choice fits, think of other definitions for the StemWord and go through the choices again. Use the idea from step 3; go back to the root word and think about other definitions.
Avoiding a Pitfall
In the second example, you might look at the word favor and think, oh, that's something positive. If you don't read all the choices, you may be tricked into choosing a wrong answer.
What to Do if You Don’t Know the Word
If you can break a word down into pieces you understand, you will be able to answer questions that you may have found too difficult to tackle. If you can put the word into a context, even if that context is cliche, you're on your way to deciphering its meaning.
SPELLING LESSON
Even if you know nothing about the word, have never seen it before, recognize no prefixes or roots, and cannot think of any word in any language as it sounds, you can still make an educated guess by try to define the word's charge. But if you can define the charge, you can probably eliminate some answer choices on that basis alone.
Two Types of Spelling Questions
Well, for all synonym questions, the correct answer will have the same charge as the word, so use your instinct about word charge to help you when you get stuck on a difficult word. However, instead of a list of just four words, you get four sentences, and one of the sentences contains a misspelled or misused word. The type of question can be tricky.
SPELLING STRATEGIES
You might tell yourself that every word is spelled correctly, which is partly true. In other words, if a word sounds good to you, but you know you are a poor speller, you may suspect that the word is actually misspelled.
GRAMMAR LESSON AND STRATEGIES
Finally, if you're not sure whether a word is spelled correctly or not, take your best guess and move on.
Parts of the Sentence
The pronouns on the right are object pronouns because they replace nouns that are used as objects in the sentence. In the sentence "Jack walked his dog", the possessive determiner "his" tells us that the dog belongs to Jack.
Sentence Types
When used as conjunctions, these always occur in pairs: Either is always followed later in the sentence by or, and neither is always followed by neither. In these cases, you will need to determine whether the sentence expresses unexpected emotion (exclamatory) or asks a question (interrogative).
Common Errors
The three parrots appear immediately before the verb, but the three parrots are not the subject of the sentence - the guy is the subject. If the clause is not separated from the rest of the sentence by commas, use this.
ASSESSING PASSAGE DEVELOPMENT
Indeed, the purpose of descriptive writing is to create a detailed image or idea in the reader's mind. In persuasive writing, the author's goal is to persuade the reader to take a certain position about a topic.
ASSESSING PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE AND LOGIC
The descriptive text structure, as one would expect, is used to present a detailed description of a topic to paint a mental picture for the reader. The most easily observed difference between alligators and crocodiles is. the shape of the head.
FIXING” READING PASSAGES
The passage does not present social integration as a problem (D). A) The passage begins by introducing the possibility that paper can be used to determine the age of a book. Because the new sentence refers to a time period prior to this (the fourteenth century), it should be inserted before sentence 2. B) The third paragraph discusses chemical processes used in paper production over time, and.
PART FOUR |
Mathematics Review
This chapter provides a review of mathematics, from the most fundamental operations of addition and subtraction to the types of basic algebra and geometry you are likely to encounter on test day.
ARITHMETIC
An improper fraction is a number greater than 1 (or less than . −1) written as a fraction. An improper fraction can be converted to a mixed number, which consists of a whole number (positive or negative) and a fraction.
Odds and Evens
Positives and Negatives
Factors and Multiples
Then see what prime factors the two numbers have in common, and then multiply those common factors. To do this, multiply all the prime factors of each integer as many times as they appear.
The Order of Operations
If you want to find a common multiple of two integers, you can always multiply them.
Divisibility Rules
Properties of Numbers
When groups are multiplied, the product of the first number, and the sum of the second and third numbers, is equal to the sum of the product of the first and second numbers, as well as the product of the first and third numbers.
Fractions and Decimals
Comparing Fractions
Common Percent Equivalencies
If it is a 4 or less, leave the number in question as is and replace all the digits to the right with zeros. If the digit to the right of the number in question is 5 or greater, increase the number by 1 and replace all the digits to the right with zeros.
Exponents and Roots
To add or subtract radicals, make sure the numbers under the radical sign are the same. To simplify radicals, subtract the perfect squares under the radical, extract the square root of the perfect square, and place the result before the sign of the radical.
The Power of 10
To take the square root of a fraction, divide the fraction into two separate roots and take the square root of the numerator and denominator.
Percents
Average
Conversions
Converting Between Decimals and Percentages
Converting Between Fractions and Decimals/Percentages
If you are asked to find the percent equivalent of a fraction, simply perform the division that is already shown in the fraction. If you are asked to find the fraction that corresponds to a percentage, just remember that all percentages are basically fractions of 100%.
Ratios, Proportions, and Rates
If you are asked to find the percent equivalent, the only additional step you need to take is to move the decimal point two places to the right: 80%. Remember, although not all rates are speeds, this formula can be adapted to any rate.
Units of Measurement
To convert between temperatures in degrees Celsius and degrees Fahrenheit, use the formula , where C is the temperature in degrees Celsius and F is the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. You may need to convert pounds to ounces or feet to meters (or vice versa) to arrive at the correct answer choice.
Converting to Military Time
A Word About Word Problems
ALGEBRA
Algebraic Expressions
Let's say that in addition to the 2 bananas you bought, you also bought 3 apples and 1 pear. The variables are not exactly the same; that is, they are not raised to the same exponent.
Equations
Since you want to isolate x on one side of the equation, start by subtracting 2y from both sides. Then subtract 3x from both sides to get all the x's on one side of the equation.
Substitution
Inequalities
Since −5 is negative and 10 is positive, −5 must be multiplied by something negative to get a.
Algebra Word Problems
Word Problems with Formulas
If he answered all the questions within two hours, how many minutes on average did he spend answering each question? The time it took Thomas to complete the exam is given in hours, but the question is how many minutes each question took.
Working with a Question
Make sure you read each question carefully so you don't fall for tricks like this.
MATHEMATICS STRATEGIES
Kaplan’s 4-Step Method for Math Questions
- Read the Question
- Decide to Skip or Do the Problem
- Look for the Fastest Approach
- Make an Educated Guess
The information about the cost of donuts and coffee can be translated into two different equations using the variables d and c. But if you stop for a minute and look for a shortcut, you will see that there is a faster way: The difference in price between 3 donuts and a cup of coffee and 2 donuts and a cup of coffee is the price of one doughnut.
Kaplan’s Other Strategies
If the answer choices are radicals or fractions (plugging them in takes too much time). Since this is not one of the answer choices, see if any of the answer choices can be traced back to.
PART FIVE |
Science Review
BUILDING BLOCKS FOR THE TEST
BIOLOGY LESSON
CELLULAR BIOLOGY
Biological Chemistry
The polarity of the water molecule is one reason why water is so good at dissolving so many different substances, earning the title of water. You may never have thought about it before, but at the molecular level, water is definitely sticky.
Other Biological Molecules
The lipid bilayer is what makes up most of the cell membrane in living cells. Nucleic acids are another class of essential biological molecules found in all living organisms.
How Cells Get Energy to Make ATP
Glycolysis is a very ancient pathway in the evolution of life, present in all kingdoms of life, from bacteria to humans. Glycolysis is important because it is the first biochemical pathway in capturing energy from glucose, which produces ATP.
THE GENOME AND GENE EXPRESSION
Chloroplasts are found mainly in the cells of the mesophyll, the green tissue inside leaves. A leaf contains pores on its surface called stomata that allow carbon dioxide in and oxygen out, facilitating photosynthesis in the leaf.
Principles of Central Dogma
The basic outline of information flow in living organisms is sometimes called the Central Dogma.
DNA Basics
Both DNA and RNA are nucleic acids; the structure of RNA is very similar to that of single-stranded DNA. These differences include the use of ribose in the RNA backbone instead of deoxyribose; the presence of the base uracil in RNA instead of thymine; and the fact that RNA is usually single-stranded, while DNA is usually double-stranded.
CELL STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION
There are three types of RNA with different functions: messenger RNA (mRNA), ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and transfer RNA (tRNA). Basically, mRNA codes for gene messages that must be decoded during protein synthesis to form proteins; rRNA is part of the structure of ribosomes and is involved in translation (protein synthesis); and tRNA plays a role in protein synthesis.
Cell Theory
Prokaryotic Versus Eukaryotic Cells
The organelle membrane and interior are separated from the rest of the cell, allowing organelles to perform separate functions that are isolated from other activities, which is not possible in prokaryotes. Centrioles, located in the centrosome, are found in animal cells, but not in plant cells.
Plasma Membrane
Organelles
The ER is involved in the transport of proteins into cells, especially proteins destined to be secreted from the cell. Proteins that are secreted, found in the cell membrane, the ER, or the Golgi apparatus, are made by ribosomes on the RER.
Membrane Transport Across the Plasma
Traffic across the membrane is extensive, but the membrane is selectively permeable; substances do not cross its barrier. Collective movement across the membrane is determined by passive diffusion of material directly across the membrane and selective transport processes across the membrane that require proteins.
