3.9 GPA, cant pass Nursing school tests!???

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I am at a loss for words. I dont know what to do anymore. I came into the RN program with a 3.9 GPA. I am SHOCKED that I am on the verge of failing my 2nd semester of Nursing school. I study my class notes, Powerpoints, I have 4 NCLEX review books I study as well. I cannot pass the tests. I am begining to think it is my naturally 'overanalytical' mind that is keeping me from doing well on these tests. I think I overthink the answers. And if this is the case, how do I overcome that? As you know, these are not tests based on fact and one answer is right. I find it impossibe! What to do??? Any advice is appreciated!

Nursing school is different. D'oh, I hear you say. Well, the reason it's different is that although there is a very heavy didactic component in your prerequisites, in the nursing part of the major it's application that counts. You are expected to take all the knowledge you gained in prereqs and in all your nursing classes and apply judgment in using all of it. The process you use to do that is called "critical thinking," and it's not something that a lot of other types of majors will give you. It is different from reading critically or critiquing a research paper, which you may be proficient in and is not wasted effort. It's a different conceptual framework, is all.

The nursing process of assessment, diagnosing, planning, implementing/delegating, and evaluating isn't exactly the structure that even grad-level coursework in regular academic uses. More than any other major, it pulls in content from all your other courses, in addition to the new nursing content (that itself is not intuitive, of course; it's new). This is why you are struggling. Think different.

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Hello everyone,

I just stumbled upon this thread and found all the info posted very helpful. I will start nursing school in the spring. I personally sometimes struggle with best answer type test questions. My question is do they teach you to start thinking in that type of way and let you know nursing is a different format from what were use to? I know I'm used to studying books, notes ect. And I know this was the way to get through the prerequisites courses, but from what I'm reading this is not the way to get through nursing school. I hope my question makes sense. Any feed back would helpful.

Thx :)

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A number of NCLEX review books give you the rationales for the right answers. However, you want to seek out the ones that give you the reasons why they wrong answers are wrong, too.

Also, every time you learn something, ask yourself, "Why do I care about this?" You will find you have more and better answers to this as you go along, but you have to ask it anyway.

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I agree,

This is why I despise standardized testing. It's not a reflection of what you truly know in some cases..believe it or not, my GPA is a little bit ruined because of this. I want to go to NP school, but now I don't think I even have a shot. I am beginning to realize that in order to pass nursing school, you just need to know how to be a good test taker, not learn the information. Because there are a few in my class who score 90's on their exams and don't study a DAMN THING !

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^ I think you need to be careful with that "assessment" of your classmates. I know in my cohort, there are some cutthroaters who say stuff like "I barely studied for that test" when in fact they did - it's sort of like psychological warfare. I don't know why they do it, maybe it's to give them an advantage by making the "competition" feel like they got a chance - but I know for a fact nobody aces those nursing exams without studying their butts off. It's not doable - even if they are good test takers, they must know some things (lab values, nursing interventions, etc) to know how to rule out the wrong answers to get the right answer. And that requires knowledge of the materials, which requires studying.

You hear it all the time - oh I studied for a week, oh I studied for 9 hours - if those 9 hours consisted of making note cards, then they weren't spent studying. Some people study for 2 hours and they know what to study - but to say they didn't study is false.

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To the person about the immigrants - The immigrants may just have better reasoning and critical thinking skills than you do. It's not all memorization, and what top school you took classes at before. I don't mean to sound nasty, but I took offense at the immigrant comment. Many immigrants speak several languages, they have taken the same prereqs as you and have done well enough taking classes in what is a foreign language to them to get into the same program that you are in. That must say something for their intelligence level.

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And yes, people who say they don't study are lying, plain and simple.

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Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.
And yes, people who say they don't study are lying, plain and simple.

Not always -- I often didn't even read the assigned chapters, let alone do additional studying, but would still pass the exams with grades between 85%-95%.

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How did you know about signs and symptoms, diseases processes, etc?

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Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.
How did you know about signs and symptoms, diseases processes, etc?

Well, I did attend every lecture and paid attention during class. That helped. ;)

And some of it is stuff that I just already knew (from having researched stuff for myself or family/friends in the past), and some of it is common sense / knowing how to read/answer an NCLEX-style question.

For example, when I was pregnant with my son 15 years ago, I read a gazillion books on pregnancy and childbirth and child development. My L&D/peds class was easy-peasy as a result -- there was very little that was covered in the class that I hadn't already read about years previous. Same with things like hypertension, hypothyroidism, diabetes, etc. -- these are all subjects that I was already familiar with separate from attending nursing school.

Then when you consider that ALL of our exam questions were NCLEX-style questions, you can usually pare down the available options with a little common sense, once you figure out the core of the question.

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Specializes in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology.

If it helps to think of it this way in terms of how to curb your over-analytical nature, then consider this: in the nursing situation, you can really only consider the facts. You cannot add to anything you have gathered subjectively or objectively. You cannot posit or assume anything about the patient past what you are able to gather in terms of data. So, why would you do it on a question? It is impractical to do it in real life so what's the point in doing it on a test? I tend to do it too but I have become so aware of it that when I find myself doing it, I stop, look at what the question is asking ONLY and work from there. If my mind tries to chime in with a, "Well, what if the pt has this or needs that or a fever means this but also possibly this and blah blah blah" I tell myself to stop and reverse. Go back to the question and only answer what is asked. I do not allow myself to add anything to the situation. I only consider what is presented. This takes practice (a lot of practice) but once you keep finding yourself doing this, then you are able to prevent it come exam time. Good luck! Also, keep in mind whatever you did to get your GPA where it is before nursing school is entirely different from what you need to do to make the grade now. Let it go and figure out a new strategy (think focusing on building critical thinking skills).

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Specializes in PEDS.

Good for you. I wish I could do that, and be sucessful.

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