I'm done with NCLEX

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So today I think I'm done with NCLEX. I have studied nonstop since graduation. While some of my friends are like: "relax, man, you got to play around a little bit. It's Christmas and New Year." and I was like "nah, sorry, I need to get my butt back to studying." Luckily, Texas allows plenty of chances to retake the test, but my mind is set on taking it ONE time only. I don't want to waste time and money to do it all over again. So, for almost 6 weeks straight, my mind is constantly tense. As if to add more insult to the injury, my ATT is delayed. Due to a stupid mistake while my school sent the application over to the BON (they typed my birthday wrong), the BON couldn't process my application and issue an ATT. For 4 weeks, I have to call back and forth to Texas BON to know what's going on, and each time they promised that I would get the ATT next week. Finally, when a girl in my class announced that she passed the test, I called them again. I told them that it is ridiculous, someone in my class already passed the test and I'm still sitting here waiting for the ATT, that I have been studying my butt off and I don't even know if I had a chance to do the test at all.

That morning the ATT arrived in my email. I immediately scheduled for 2PM on the 29th (there are no other spot left in Jan, and I hate to wait until Feb). I guess that's a good thing.

I was scheduled at 2 PM, but when I arrived at 12:15, the lady at the desk allowed me to go in because there are plenty of empty spots inside. I took a deep breath and go in.

Guess what? I even sat next to a girl from nursing class. She secretly tossed me a smile.

That didn't keep my heart from beating fast. In fact I think I need some Xanax

Anyway, the test is a mixture of stupid and weird and totally nonsensical questions. I knew that I would probably get a lot of SATA but I didn't expect nearly HALF of my test to be just SATA. I got 2 meds calculation, quite a few pharms question, some OB, some Pedi, some Psy. There are so many SATA questions that almost every other question is SATA. I'm not kidding when I say that after I clicked the "Next" button, I expect to see another SATA, and voila. Sometimes I get 2-3 SATA in a row. I have heard that the more you get SATA, the better you are doing. At that time, I was so exhausted. Now I understand how Luke felt when he fought Darth Vader.

Near the end, I started to see priority and less SATA. Yes, they are tough, but I'm not really afraid of them, because I finished the LaCharity book, and I think that book is awesome at preparing me for the test. Forget about Kaplan decision tree. When you do enough questions, you no longer have to rely on that. When I look at the answer, the 1st one my eye stopped at usually is the correct choice, I check the other 3 just to make sure I didn't miss anything.

And personally, I think Kaplan decision tree is useless. I only used the ABC in ONE question. No, airway is NOT always the right choice. That's one thing I don't like about the Decision tree. They want you to follow a certain rule, while in fact, you have to use your own judgement based on your knowledge.

Anyway, I have heard someone said that they got more priority questions at the end. So when the number reach 75 and shut off, I was not very surprised. I didn't think I did very good, but I didn't think I was THAT bad either. When I got home, I immediately tried the PVT and the pop up saying something like I have to contact the BON and I can't schedule another test right now. Based on my experience while lurking around this forum, I know that I passed.

The material I used

NCSBN 5 weeks: I think this is the most useful, because the practice test is VERY tough, much tougher than Saunder and even Hurst. The content is sooooo dry that I thought I should monitor it for severe dehydration.

LaCharity: without this book, I would never get over the killer priority questions at the end

Hurst video: good for content and easy to remember.

Saunder and Wikipedia (I'm serious) for content.

And my own notes. Every time I found an interesting question with good rationale, I wrote it down in my own terms. I guess that's why I passed

I'm an average student in school. If I can do this, you can too. It takes a lot of time and effort but in the end you will see how much it pays back when you take the test. Don't be discouraged if you failed 1-2 times or when you're too tired to study. Take a short break and think that everything you do will pull you a little closer to that "PASS" letter.

Good luck, my friends, may the Force be with you.

btw, please don't email/message me asking for my notes. The reason is that I used TONS of abbreviation and it was created for me, based on what I don't understand or need to memorize. If you create your own notes by jogging down rationales, you will have the same thing (or even better) than any notes offering online. And no, none of the stuffs I wrote down really help in the test, lol. I think 70% of the test has nothing to do with anything I've ever studied.

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Congratulations! I did the same thing with jotting down my own notes and it seems to help me a lot. What were you scoring on the NCSBN tests prior to testing?

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Great recap! Thank you for sharing :-)

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Congrats! I also used NCSBN as well as jotting down notes/rationales. Although I didn't spend any time really reviewing my notes, I felt like writing it down made it stick in my head better!

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How do you find the NCSBN practice test? I can not find it anywhere on the site or maybe I'm not looking hard enough. THanks

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How do you find the NCSBN practice test? I can not find it anywhere on the site or maybe I'm not looking hard enough. THanks

The NCSBN is actually a course. They have content by systems and a ton of questions (1000+). The 5 week subscription which is what I used was $50. I can't vouch for the content as I didn't really use it, but the questions were great! They also have an 8 and 13 week subscription which is more money.

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Specializes in ICU.

I feel like I could have written this post! I found the NCLEX weird and non-nonsensical too. I felt LaCharity helped me a lot too and was instrumental in helping me pass the first time around with 75 questions.

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Congrats!!

I feel the same way too. The majority of the time I was saying "seriously?" in my head because the questions I got were just so ridiculous. Kaplan did not help much. I didn't even use the decision tree. But I do love all the questions they provided because it helped me become comfortable in answering questions during the exam. Their formatting is so similar to NCLEX.

Only ONE topic I studied showed up on the exam. oh well...just praying the good pop up is very accurate.

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