Has anyone heard that NCLEX is doing this?

Nursing Students NCLEX

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I took NCLEX last week and passed with 265 questions. One of the interns I work with told me that at his exam they had announced that some people might be randomly selected to do all 265 questions, because the test is new and BNE wanted more data.

Even if they are doing that I'm not assuming that's what happened in my case. But I would have like to have known, just because I'd have felt less panicked. Has anyone heard anything?

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Specializes in SICU.

That is an "old wives tale" and is NOT true. The nclex is a CAT, which means it is a computer adaptive test. The number it stops at is individual and it will not keep going after it has determined one way or the other that you are safe to practice or not. It also does not matter at which number it stops at. A pass is a pass and does not get recorded as a number.

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ukstudent is right - nothing but a rumor. This myth is addressed in the NCLEX Candidate Bulletin available at http://www.ncsbn.org.

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ukstudent is right - nothing but a rumor. This myth is addressed in the NCLEX Candidate Bulletin available at www.ncsbn.org.

I looked at the candidate bulletin but I don't see where it addresses the myth. I'm not disagreeing with you guys, but since this is something a few people have told me now, I'd like to see something definitive.

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Specializes in SICU.

Question: Are candidates randomly selected to receive maximum length examinations-265 items for the NCLEX-RN® examination and 205 items for the NCLEX-PN® examination?

Answer: Items are administered following the principles of computer adaptive testing (CAT). Candidates are NOT randomly selected to receive a designated number of examination items. As a candidate takes the examination, questions are selected based on the candidate's response to previous questions. Testing stops when it can be determined with 95% confidence that a candidate's performance is either above or below the passing standard, regardless of the number of items answered or the amount of testing time elapsed (six-hour maximum time period for the NCLEX-RN examination and five hour maximum time period for the NCLEX-PN examination).

The above is found on the site EricEnfermero mentioned. Look under nclex and then under frequently asked questions. This is question 5.

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