How I Passed NCLEX First Attempt With A 15% Chance To Pass According to ATI

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As topic says, I want to share how I managed to pass NCLEX with my sorry 15% chance to pass according to the ATI Comp Predictor.

I took my NCLEX Jan 15th. After a torturous wait, my quick results were finally available and I paid and found that I had indeed passed.

Some Specifics about my testing experience: I passed with 75 questions in about an hour and a half. At least half my questions were SATA, about a fifth of my questions were medications, all of which I did not recognize. I had a couple growth and development questions and maternity questions. I had 3 calculation questions where you had to calculate ml/hr from mcg/kg/min with a medication concentration of X mg in X amount of ml. I would say the majority content of my questions were stuff like: Which of the following would you include in a multidisciplinary conference about a patient with X, patient teaching/stopping a new RN from doing something (mostly SATA), and a lot of pick the priority patient out of 4 unstable patients.

Graduated December 11, 2014. I took my ATI comp predictor about half a semester before finishing nursing school. Needless to say, when I got my 15% chance to pass, I was greatly disheartened while everyone I knew was getting 80%-98% chance to pass. I do know of course that it was my own fault. I was that student that only studied for the test and did not study for anything else or took the time to study for the NCLEX while attending nursing school. Regardless, I was not a "bad" student. I consistently kept a decent GPA of 3.5+. My college requires all nurse graduates take the a 3 day ATI live review. Once I could register, I scheduled my NCLEX for Jan 15th. About a little over a month after graduating.

How I Prepared: To start, because of my previous habits, I had a hard time answering NCLEX style questions AND was really lacking in my core basic content base. My only confident strengths were in fundamentals and my last critical care course.

I am also the type of person that cannot focus for more than a couple hours and usually needs to have some form of fun everyday. So following all these other's advice to study for even more than 4 hours would not work for me. I also cannot stand having my face in a book constantly so I reached out for different formats of studying (books, flash cards, computers, phone). I did not study Pharmacology at all until the last 2 days of my study plan, I felt there are far too many medications to even effectively study this topic. I stuck to common meds which did not even show up on the exam.

I'll try to outline this week by week.

Week 1: After graduating I took a few days breather and started studying on Dec 15th. I started only doing 50-100 questions and reading rationales a day throughout the entire day which usually only took me 30 minutes-1hr to do. I did not do anything else. I used MOSBY'S Review Cards for the NCLEX-RN Examination 3rd edition.

Week 2: I increased my questions with Mosby's flash cards to about 100-150 per day. Increased my study time to about 1hr or a little more.

Week 3: Picked it up here. I got the Hurst NCLEX-RN review and downloaded the NCLEX-RN Mastery app on my iphone. I finished this book front to back by Sunday of this week while also doing 200-300 questions per day. My day consisted of reading till lunch time, usually about 1-2 hrs. Then about 100 questions from mosby cards which usually averaged around 45min to 1hr. If I felt up to it, throughout the rest of my day I used the app to review 10-20 questions every time I had down time. After dinner I made sure to review more app questions about 100-150. Finished the box of Mosby flash cards about halfway through this week.

Week 4 (Up to Jan 11): I used the ATI review exams plus the mastery app. Because, according to the app, my avg time answering questions was about 30 seconds, I planned to make sure I did a certain number of quests. Usually about 2 hrs, or 120 minutes and that I must answer 240 questions minimum in the morning from ati exams. This usually resulted in taking about 4 ATI practice exams per morning. Followed the same 10-20 app questions during down time. And increased to at least 200 questions after dinner from the app. This avg to about 500+ questions per day. Weekend I did every ATI live review exam twice except for pharmacology.

Jan 12 and 13: I started to slow down on these days. Took the ATI Live review exams for pharmacology only in the morning, followed my 10-20 with the app, and went back down to 100 app questions after dinner.

Jan 14: Did zero studying. I spent the day relaxing, trying to calm my nerves, and sleeping early.

At no time during these 4+ weeks did I feel like I over did it. I had plenty of free time. During my studying I paid more attention to learning any content I did not know and any prioritizing questions. Also to clear up my way of "studying" only involved reading. I did not write or create anything. The only time I wrote something while studying was when I was reviewing pharmacology, writing anything I missed.

In regards to the ATI comp predictor, high or low % make sure to keep up studying or slowly increase it. Don't lose heart or don't get a big head over it. I have seen the latter result in multiple downfalls.