Needles and a Pen » Knitting, Sewing, and Nursing School

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    Hi! I'm Traci. I'm a Registered Nurse who loves quilting, knitting, cross stitch, and the great outdoors. In my pre-scrubs life, I owned Real Photography, and you can still see my old wedding and portrait photography site here .

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ACCUPLACER Biology Placement Test Tips

As I looked at the daunting list of nursing school prereqs four years ago, I discovered that while a basic college biology course was needed to get into Anatomy & Physiology and Microbiology, it wasn’t actually required by the nursing program itself.  Eager to cut out a course and its related expenses, I looked into testing out of it through the ACCUPLACER biology placement test my community college uses.  (I believe that CLEP tests are also an option at many colleges, but the ACCUPLACER has the advantage of being being very inexpensive–I believe it only cost me $10.)

My biology background to reassure you that you can do this too:  I went to high school in England, where they think it’s perfectly reasonable to let 15 year olds stop taking science classes, so my experience with biology was limited to me=human because I can talk, tree=plant because of photosynthesis?

So, when I tell you that it’s very doable to test out of Biology 111 if you put in some study time I mean it.  Now, there are times when the A&P or Microbiology prof will reference 111 (as in “as you’ll remember from 111”) and you’ll have that deer-in-the-headlights look for a moment, but overall I am very very glad I saved myself the tuition and time and used the ACCUPLACER test instead of taking the course.

How I prepared:

1) I went to my school and asked for their ‘study guide.’  I received a four page rough outline of what the test would cover and immediately began to wonder exactly to what extend I needed to learn these topics.  For the most part I over-prepared and knew them to a much deeper level than was tested.

2) I rented a general college biology textbook from Book Renter (whom I use for all of my textbooks and save tons of money with!).

3) I watched the Crash Course biology videos on the relevant topics many many times.  I cannot recommend these videos enough–they are hilarious.

4) A large part of Biology 111 handles basic chemistry.  I was taking General College Chemistry when I took the ACCUPLACER test (I was only a month from the final) and there were a lot of basic chemistry questions on the test.  I would highly recommend taking the ACCUPLACER biology test once you have taken your chemistry course (unless you already have a great background in chemistry).

I went through the study guide and using the textbook and crash course videos made my own set of notes for the test.  I got serious and actually started doing this about a month before the test.  I went in, took the test, and got a 94.  You only needed an 80 to test out of general college biology.  The adviser couldn’t believe I hadn’t taken a general college biology course before with that score.

What I’d do differently:

A lot of the test focused on microscopes and their parts.  This is something I didn’t pay much attention to on the study guide (I didn’t imagine they’d test on it) and so my photography experience came in handy here and I was able to answer the questions based on that understanding on light and magnification and focus. However, without photography I might have gotten those questions wrong, so don’t neglect to study the parts of the microscope, what they do, what they’re called and how the overall magnification is calculated.

I didn’t learn the visual structure of various organic molecules and this was something that hurt me on the test.  I’d be familiar with the structure of common molecules.

Disclaimer: I took the test in the spring of 2013.  I’m sure it changes from time to time but before taking the test I did many google searches to try and find out more about it and there just wasn’t any information.  I hope this is helpful to someone as they try to prepare for it!