How Hard is the Health Occupations Aptitude Exam (HOAE)

According to the makers of the HOAE, this test covers common subjects and skills developed during the course of a general high school education. The main areas are math, English, and the natural sciences.

That is good news for you. The material covered on the HOAE is not very hard, per se. Just the common stuff most of us picked up in high school.

But don’t let this lull you into a false sense of security and confidence leading up to the test. The HOAE can still be hard.

Here are some reasons why:

• You’ve been out of high school for a long time now, and your knowledge of things like spelling, grammar, arithmetic and the natural sciences is, well, rusty. Maybe you didn’t even do that great in high school in the first place.

• The HOAE is timed. The material covered on the HOAE isn’t necessarily very hard in and of itself. But there is a lot of it. 200 questions or so. And you only have so much time to answer all the questions. For many similar entrance tests, you have less than a minute per question! This is a deliberate tactic used by the makers of the HOAE. So it is not if you can answer a given HOAE question, but also how fast you can answer it.

• Nowhere is the timing aspect of the HOAE more important than when dealing with the math questions. Again, the math questions aren’t overly difficult. They are of a eighth-ninth grade difficulty. No advanced calculus or trigonometry here. But you aren’t allowed to use a calculator, so all calculations must be done in your head or by hand on scrap paper. If you are rusty at math, or rely on a calculator for even basic math, then this will be hard for you. Struggling to calculate an average or percentage, or doing long division, can eat up a lot of valuable time. And that can stop you for answering all of the questions on the HOAE. Which is bad.

Great. So the HOAE can be hard. Now what?

Here at TEST PREP HACKER, we got you covered. Here are a few things you can do to make sure you are test ready for the HOAE.

• Start by reviewing your basic math skills. If you need help remembering and practicing how to do things like long division by hand, then we recommend you head over to Khan Academy and watch some videos. You NEED to be comfortable with doing all the following by hand: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. This includes working with whole numbers, fractions and decimals. You also need to be able to work with ratios, percentages and averages.

• Then do some review of English spelling, vocabulary and grammar. Check out lists of commonly misspelled words.

• Review the natural sciences. This includes physics, chemistry, earth sciences and biology. There is a lot of ground to cover here.

• Take practice tests. This is our thing at TEST PREP HACKER. The latest research shows that one of the most effective ways to prepare for tests like the HOAE is to take practice tests that cover the same info in the same format as the actual test. 

Need help with all this? No problem, because here again TEST PREP HACKER has got you covered. Check out our FREE HOAE Study Guide. It has over 150 pages of great info to help you prepare for the HOAE. Then check out our HOAE practice tests. Because ultimately, the best way to get ready for the HOAE is to take practice HOAEs.

If this is a last minute thing, then we recommend you do some quick review of math and the natural sciences, and then jump right into our UNLIMITED HOAE practice tests. It will cost you $29.99, but it is the best and quickest way to get ready.