did you hear the same..regarding "mult. answer/select all that apply" q's???

Nursing28 · Oct 10, 2006

Hi Vic,

People say so much about NCLEX that I honestly have no glue. Those select all apply is tough. I had 5 of them out of 101 or 102 questions and I passed. I know you pass already.........................it's really hard to tell if you pass or fail. But it's time to relax and enjoy not studying until you find out your results. But I have a good feeling that you pass though. Will be keeping you in my prayers..............

EricJRN, MSN, RN · Oct 10, 2006

A question's level of difficulty is set is by looking at the results when the question was being pretested. For this reason, you can't just say that all select all that apply questions are the hardest. They are likely to be difficult though (which would be good news for you), because they require the candidate to check all of the correct answers and only the correct answers.

niccikatie · Oct 11, 2006

I don't know that I buy it. I passed with 76 questions and had ZERO alternate format questions. Granted, I took my NCLEX in 2004 and there was some speculation at the time that the alternate format were only 'in testing' at that time as it was the first year for them on the NCLEX. Bottom line? It's just like how many licks to the center of the tootsie-pop....the world may never know.

DolphinRN84, MSN, RN, APRN, NP · Oct 11, 2006

Yeah, there have been people in this forum that did pass the NCLEX without any alternate format type questions. I had 5-6 select all that apply when i took the test and I'm not very good at answering those type of questions.... :uhoh3: so yeah..those are hard questions since you pretty much have to select ALL possible correct answers. Wishing you luck on your results!

det01 · Oct 11, 2006

I recieved no alternative format questions (not even a math one) and passed with 80 questions.

However, I have more than one friend that got 2-3 of them and did not pass...and they did not have a high number of questions either. I have some friends that did get them and passed. I think it may just be random.

I guess that supports what has been said on here before that nothing can tell you whether or not you passed until you get your score. People pass and fail with 75, people pass and fail with 265. People get alternative format questions and pass/fail, people do not get them and pass/fail.

BTW, we have all taken the NCLEX in the past couple of months, so these are very recent results.

Good luck! Hope you passed!

crb613, BSN, RN · Oct 11, 2006

someone told me that.. getting those "mult answer/select all that apply" q's means that you are scoring correctly ..and they are harder....like.the more you get right..the harder the questions seem to get..and the more you get them wrong the easier the questions get.. is this true? ..i got 7 questions like that.. out of 145 questions.. and i did not get any other type of alternative questions..
feedback?

I don't know really, but I was told the same thing. I had a lot of select all that apply, I even had an EKG strip to read!! I also had tons (it seemed) of teaching & who to see first (my favs). I passed w/75 & am hoping you did too! The waiting I think is the hardest part of the whole thing. Good luck

EricJRN, MSN, RN · Oct 11, 2006

This highlights a great point about the NCLEX. While select all that apply questions tend to be higher difficulty and while many of these questions tend to suggest that the candidate is doing well, there are no absolutes.

You can't tell pass/fail strictly based on the presence/absence of certain question types.

Alternate format questions were introduced as unscored items in April 2003 and became scored items in October 2003.

More info here:

http://www.ncsbn.org/pdfs/01_08_04_Alt_Itm.pdf