How I passed Nclex 05/2014

I promised myself that I would come back onto this site to post what I did to pass the Nclex if I did, so here I am :)

I took the test about 2 months after graduating nursing school, but only really studied for the test for about 3 weeks, all while obsessively trolling this site for any helpful info I could find lol.

Kaplan online course and review book: I received these through my school and started doing qbank questions everyday, gradually started from 75 to about 150 questions a day. I did the question trainers up to trainer 5, and I reviewed the topics I wasn't too familiar with. My scores weren't too good, but I passed! I read over and tried to understand all the rationales. I thought the Nclex was much easier than the Kaplan questions I went over. It was much more straightforward.

Trainer 1: 62.7%

Trainer 2: 61.3%

Trainer 3: 46%

Trainer 4: 53.3%

Trainer 5: 54.7%

Q bank average: from 52% to 70%

Hurst online course and review book: I went through the book and every one of the videos just to refresh on my content. Never did the questions and found the videos funny and interesting.

NCSBN learning extension review online: Did the diagnostic test pretest and only received a grade above 75% on psychosocial integrity. Everything else was from 50%-70&. I also did the practice tests (about 30) and had grades from 55%-80%. I found the more I studied the rationales, and continued to do questions, I ended up getting better grades. I thought these questions were a lot more straightforward and more like the actual Nclex itself (makes sense since its the same people). This review is $50 and it definitely helped me get used to the style of the Nclex. Studied and practiced only this for about 5 days before the Nclex.

If you cant get all of these reviews, the main thing I would suggest is to study content. The Nclex will always have questions where you don't know the answer/disease/medication, but knowing nursing content and knowing the basics of whatever the topic is truly helps. That is the main thing that helped me pass this test; I studied Hurst content and watched youtube videos to help with whatever I didn't understand. I also think taking long practice tests helped me get into the test taking mode and prepared me to feel confident enough to sit in one place for an hour or two and still stay focused. There is also a study guide floating around here and I cannot tell you enough how the mnemonics on that guide helped me! STUDY IT!

When taking the test I chose the simplest answer, and went with my gut. I didn't spend more than a minute on each question, and ended up finishing in 70 minutes with 75 questions.

Btw- the pvt worked for me and many people I know!

Hope this helps!