Got a C on my first Nursing exam!!!!!

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Ok I just started my program beginning of January 2016. I'm in a Nursing A.A.S. Weekend program where we meet every other Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I am a 4.0 student. I studied for 2 weeks straight a LOT everyday, did some practice nclex questions, did questions from back of my fundamentals chapters, studied my powerpoint and outlines, listened to my lectures every night at work, I basically eat, breathe, and LIVE my nursing content and still...still I got a 72 on my first exam. What am I doing wrong. I remembered to think ADPIE, Maslows, and ABC first and keep my answers within our scope of practice but what am I still doing wrong and what can I do more of? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.

Every test will get better as you learn to study and think like NCLEX. Consider yourself lucky that you passed. Many people fail the first nursing exam. I think I got a 66 on my first fundamentals test.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Med-Surg, Psych, Geri, LTC, Tele,.

I agree with what Lev

This is because nursing school

Is different from other classes.

I, too, earned almost all As in all my prereqs. I recall failing my first fundamentals test. I was shocked and horrified at my performance. I'd studied a lot!

Continue to study hard. Many instructors recommended focusing on the books charts/pics/graphs as they contained important information.

One thing I wish I'd done was to take practice NCLEX Qs as part of my test prep. I now do this as a part of my regular studying. It helps a lot.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Med-Surg, Psych, Geri, LTC, Tele,.

One more thing, schedule a meeting with your professor. Ask her / him if they know of any study techniques that would be effective. You might also be able to ask them about the rationale behind the answer. This might give you insight into how to answer questions in the future.

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Specializes in Hospice, Palliative Care.

Every one of my classmates, including myself, who entered our RN program with a 4.00 GPA lost their 4.00 GPA during the first semester. Now, I do recommend what the previous poster mentioned in terms of always and promptly seeing your instructor to go over the exam if you ever do poorly on an exam.

is an excellent video to watch. Just by following one of her rules (avoid using an eraser at all costs), increased my grades. While I'm not a fan of ATI, they do have a video on coding exams that I found helpful as well.
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I always remember what my LVN instructors told me "C's are still passing and no employer is going to ask what your score was on a random quiz.

Focus on NCLEX style questions, be thankful you passed when many might not have, remember most nursing students don't finish with a 3.7 let alone a 4.0.

Don't stress the quiz scores, as long as you are grasping the concept and passing then be happy and keep on trucking.

I did my LVN and struggled through the program but passed my boards with the minimum questions even though I thought I was failing it and wanted to stop at 72 questions. I've been a LVN over 10 years and work as a case manager... Struggling through the RN program currently

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Specializes in Pediatrics, Emergency, Trauma.

Did you review the rationales from your practice questions? pmabraham gave a great video to help with understanding what the question is asking in order to get the best answer.

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Go over the exam and find out where you went wrong. The sooner the better as you will be able to remember what your thoughts were for each question. I cannot tell you how many times I got questions wrong not because I lacked in content, but because I a) read the question too quickly and did not give a thought of what it was asking b) did not read all the answer options because I thought option B was the answer c) overlooked the obvious answer since I thought, um, it can't be this easy. A lot of times we shoot ourselves in the foot. And trust me it can be frustrating. But when you know where you went wrong, you can start to correct those areas. Nursing school is a self-discovery journey.

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I would also set a meeting with your instructor.

What about the questions were you getting wrong. On one of my tests during the 1st semester my cohort and I spent HOURS memorizing pathophysiology and sign/symptoms related to diseases, turns out all the questions were strictly on nursing management of medications and patient teaching.

I live and breathe NCLEX questions now. When I study content, I ask how can this be an nclex style questions.

I do a minimum of 100 nclex questions for every test. Learn strategies for answering them so you have a shot of getting it right even if you're not 100% on the content

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The same thing happened to me with my first nursing exam and I was beside myself! I used to be an all A student and it felt unacceptable. But the further along I got, the more I realized that, A) the grades aren't that important as long as you pass and B) you have to learn how to read and answer these questions. They test you in a way that no one else ever will and it takes time to learn. I would recommend doing a lot of NCLEX questions every day. Last semester we used PrepU with our Lippincott books and when I finally started to use it on a daily basis probably doing several hundred NCLEX questions a day was when I started to get A's and B's on my exams. It's a learning curve so don't beat yourself up with your first bad grade! Just move on and study for the next test.

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