Want to Become a Nurse? Learn How to Beat the Wonderlic!

Before you send in that application letter to that nursing school that you are interested in, whether it’s the dream college that you’ve been wanting to join or because it’s your parent/s’ alma mater, you need to ask yourself one thing: Are you ready to ace the Wonderlic Scholastic Level Exam (SLE) for Nursing?

Nurses often need to pass mandatory exams for admission, like NET, Kaplan Admissions Test, TEAS, and more. Online courses allow practicing with a tutor, while independent studying is supported through online resources. For instance, you can access reading materials and free TEAS test mock exams. These exams typically assess knowledge of language use and fundamental healthcare topics.

While the college entrance exams for nursing schools may vary, numerous institutions all over the country prefer to use the Wonderlic SLE or a specialized version of it as part of their admissions process.

Considering that nothing about the Wonderlic test is directly tied to nursing in terms of subjects, it is not uncommon for aspiring students to question its usage as a college admissions test.

In reality, however, the test itself actually allows the nursing school to see if the student has the basic skills and cognitive abilities needed to become a nurse.

In reality, however, the test itself actually allows the nursing school to see if the student has the basic skills and cognitive abilities needed to handle the duties and responsibilities of being a nurse.

That being said, this means that if you want to join a prestigious and big-name nursing school, you not only have to pass, but also ace, their Wonderlic test so that you can be one step closer to achieving your dreams. It might help to consider some online classes that enable you to get certified in the medical field to warm up. Not only will you acquire the knowledge in Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS), for example, you will be better prepared for the big finale.

Without further ado, here are a number of tips on how to beat the Wonderlic SLE for Nursing!

1) Sharpen your numerical reasoning skills

While there is a good balance between mathematical and non-math questions, there are a number of numerical questions that may cost you points if you aren’t familiar with them or if it’s been a while since you last encountered them.

If ratio, percentages, and statistical and graphical data analysis aren’t your forte, it would be a good idea to brush up on them because most of its numerical reasoning questions will revolve around them.

The questions will come in the form of traditional formula-based ones as well as word problems.

2) Learn how to tackle spatial reasoning questions

Another major roadblock that most test-takers encounter in the Wonderlic assessments is the spatial reasoning portion of the exam.

In this portion, you will be presented with a set of images or figures that seem unrelated to each other or follow a nonsensical sequence. 

It will be your job to figure out which of the answer choices is the one that’s next in the figure or the one that’s missing in the series.

3) Focus on the subjects that you are more familiar with first

Every person out there has their own strengths and weaknesses, some of them are better when it comes to English or reading comprehension-based subjects or questions while others have their forte on math and calculation-based questions.

This means that if you are struggling with a particular subject or question in the Wonderlic assessment, you should know that it is perfectly okay for you to skip it so that you can focus on the ones that you can answer correctly.

By securing the ‘easy’ questions first, you will have more time to spare for the difficult ones later.

4) Understand that you are not expected to answer everything

The Wonderlic test contains 50 questions from multiple subjects of varying complexity and difficulty, and the test-taker is only given 12 minutes to answer as many questions as they can.

Should you attempt to do this, you will only have around 14 seconds PER QUESTION, and considering that many math questions contain multiple values and variables, this isn’t enough for the average, or even bright, person to do.

To make things worse, a number of questions are intentionally designed to serve as time traps, meaning if you encounter them and try to solve them, it will eat up precious minutes all for one measly point.

This does not mean that you should just leave the question blank, however. Instead, the best course of action is to make an educated guess. 

5) Practice, practice, practice!

Last but not least, the best way to learn on how to beat the Wonderlic assessment, or any test for that matter, is to look up online practice tests so that you can get first-hand knowledge on how it works, allowing you to ace it with relative ease.

In doing so, you will become familiar with the timed environment of the exam and even discover which questions are legitimate time traps that you can safely skip or make an educated guess on.

With a bit of hard work, smart thinking, and perhaps a bit of luck in the question bank that will be assigned to you, we are confident that you too can beat the Wonderlic test!