Beat the Wonderlic test and apply to Nursing School
Many nursing students see the Wonderlic test as a difficult roadblock from reaching their dreams.
While the exam isn’t tough on its own, a lot of test-takers still fail it due to various reasons.
This can range from them not understanding how it works, not being familiar with its subject matter, or not prepared enough that they allow stress and worry to get the better of them, affecting their judgement and thus making them pick the wrong answers.

The good thing? This doesn’t need to happen to you
The Wonderlic assessments, like many other admissions or pre-employment tests out there in the market, can be overcome with good preparation, practice, and mindset.
So, if you want to secure your slot at the nursing school that you are aiming for, let’s go over some things that can help you beat the Wonderlic test and bring you closer to achieving your dreams!
Be familiar with its subject matter
The Wonderlic test for nursing contains four major subjects handpicked by test course developers to assess a person’s cognitive ability as a whole.
These are:
- Numerical Reasoning – Here, you encounter simple to complex operations. Questions will revolve around basic arithmetic, some algebra, percentages, word problems, ratio, table/data analysis, among others.
- Verbal Reasoning – Here, you encounter questions revolving around one’s understanding of the English language and they come in the form of synonym/antonym designation, fill-in-the-blanks, reading comprehension, word choices, etc.
- Logical Reasoning – Here, you encounter questions that aim to prove your ability to form logical conclusions and understand logic-based statements.
- Graphical Reasoning – Here, you encounter questions that aim to prove your ability to understand graphs and simple-to-moderately-difficult spatial reasoning questions such as 3D cubes, clock hands patterns, and others.
This means that if you want to do well in the Wonderlic test, you need to study those subjects well so that you can both secure points and save precious time.
Your greatest enemy isn’t the exam itself, it is the time limit
Many people fail the Wonderlic not because the questions are hard. Instead, they failed because they ran out of time and were unable to answer the rest of the exam.
Why? You only have 12 minutes to answer everything, and the Wonderlic test contains 50 questions.
This means that you only have 14 seconds to answer each question.
If you go over one second, even if for a single question, then it is very likely that you will be unable to answer another due to a lack of time.
With this in mind, it would be in your best interest to first focus on subjects or questions that you are familiar with.
Remember, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses.
If you’re good at English but bad at math, then there is no shame in answering the former first.
After all, you can always come back later to the questions that you missed or have difficulty with in the Wonderlic test.
If you answer questions that you are sure to get, you are securing every possible point that you can get before going on to tackle the more difficult ones.
If all else fails, don’t be ashamed to…
Make an educated guess.
If you consider the time limit of the Wonderlic exam, it is almost impossible to answer all 50 questions in such a short period.
In fact, only a small percentage of test-takers can even complete the 50-item exam, and only a small number of them are able to get a perfect score.
But, it is still imperative for you to get the minimum passing score for your nursing school of choice.
As a result, if you are certain that you cannot answer a question within the 14-second window, then there is no shame in making an educated guess.
This is because there is no penalty for doing so and that the test developers of the exam also include ‘Time Trap’ questions.
These questions serve no purpose other than to try and make the test-taker fail by being so complex or long that trying to answer them is not worth it.
But since you miss out on a point if you leave it blank, then it would be best to make an educated guess as you will still have a chance to get it right.
Last but not least: Practice!
It is not a well-kept secret that taking a test a second time makes it easier because you’ll know what will appear in it.
But considering the fact that most test-takers only have one chance to get into their nursing school of sorts, you need to get it right the first time.
As a result, it might be a good investment for you to look up some online Wonderlic practice tests.
Such mock exams contain questions that are likely to appear or are near-identical to the ones that you can see in the actual exam itself.
By making good use of them, you will be familiar with the contents of the Wonderlic, as well as get the hang of its time limit.
With this, you will gain firsthand knowledge on how to tackle it and even create testing strategies that are most compatible with you.