Just passed nclex-RN in 75 questions - tips for everyone to pass on the first time!

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so i posted on the forum a couple of days ago with my scores and i was pretty nervous but i went and took it test cut off at 75 questions, did the Pearsonvue trick got the good pop up, checked my quick results today and i passed.

passed on the first time, so how did i do it?

i got my hands on the hurst review lectures, and i listened to 2 of them everyday from december (my graduation) till about february 20th. if you know somebody that has access to hurst review they can send you the lectures or you can record them using software on your computer while they play and circulate them through your school (its illegal but do what you must to pass).

I bought the kaplan qbank - ONLY THE QBANK NOTHING ELSE - for 299 and i did 50 questions a day and really focused on reading the rationales. If i got questions right i wanted to know why i got it right and if i got them wrong i made a list of things and i researched it for the rest of the day to learn about it. also i always did the exams timed. the reason you SHOULD NOT do the tests with the rationales available at anytime because in the actual nclex you wont have rationales available mid test. also the rationales you read mid test will skew your scores higher and give you false reassurance about your grades. I was starting with about 60% and toward the end i was getting around 70-78% (unused questions only i never went back and redid questions)

Around 1 week before my test i did question trainers which i found online and downloaded/converted to word document format. i would circulate it to you all but its illegal, i know they have websites that you can view them in pdf format but you cant download them. trust me on this - after a week of searching on google for hours there is a website where you can download every single question trainer!!

my QT scores were as follows

Question Trainer 1 - 76%

Question trainer 2 - 70%

Question trainer 3 - 63%

Question Trainer 7 - 62%

I DID NOT DO EVERY QUESTION TRAINER, its not even necessary to be honest. i didnt do any readiness exams or any of that. if u listened to the hurst lectures everyday, that is your content and you will be fine.

So how did my nclex go?

30 SATA

10 Reorder questions

3 Med calc

6 Ehibit

0 Hotspot

0 Listen

1 Cardiac Rythym question

the rest were multiple choice

EVERYTHING THAT I STUDIED WAS NOT ON THE EXAM!!!! SO STOP MEMORIZING CONTENT!! i had a lot of professionalism questions like evidence based practice and malpractice.. which shocked the hell out of me. cuz i didnt study it.

but i passed. you will pass. i left that room thinking i failed because honest to god the questions were so hard i didnt know *** they were asking me but i passed.

gonna sound corny but visualize you telling everyone you passed, put it out to the universe that you will be a nurse, and you will post here and pass. if you see question 76, you are still in the game keep your wits about you.

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Congratulations!!!

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thanks :)

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Wow! Congrats!!

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By Gods grace I passed Nclex on my first try.This is what I did, hopefully it will help someone out there. I read the exam cram and did some of the questions in the book. I did not finish the book. I did not really like Kaplan rationale so I really do not like it. I force my self to read it though.The unofficial study guide on this site helped me .I did not cram the study guide, but I wrote down everything I know about each point on the study guide off head and if I couldn't write anything down about a disease or drugs,I will go back and study the disease process from exam cram or Saunders. Also SATA in Saunders helped me a lot. Good luck to those that will be taking their nclex soonest. Remember to pray .

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so i posted on the forum a couple of days ago with my scores and i was pretty nervous but i went and took it test cut off at 75 questions, did the Pearsonvue trick got the good pop up, checked my quick results today and i passed.

passed on the first time, so how did i do it?

i got my hands on the hurst review lectures, and i listened to 2 of them everyday from december (my graduation) till about february 20th. if you know somebody that has access to hurst review they can send you the lectures or you can record them using software on your computer while they play and circulate them through your school (its illegal but do what you must to pass).

I bought the kaplan qbank - ONLY THE QBANK NOTHING ELSE - for 299 and i did 50 questions a day and really focused on reading the rationales. If i got questions right i wanted to know why i got it right and if i got them wrong i made a list of things and i researched it for the rest of the day to learn about it. also i always did the exams timed. the reason you SHOULD NOT do the tests with the rationales available at anytime because in the actual nclex you wont have rationales available mid test. also the rationales you read mid test will skew your scores higher and give you false reassurance about your grades. I was starting with about 60% and toward the end i was getting around 70-78% (unused questions only i never went back and redid questions)

Around 1 week before my test i did question trainers which i found online and downloaded/converted to word document format. i would circulate it to you all but its illegal, i know they have websites that you can view them in pdf format but you cant download them. trust me on this - after a week of searching on google for hours there is a website where you can download every single question trainer!!

my QT scores were as follows

Question Trainer 1 - 76%

Question trainer 2 - 70%

Question trainer 3 - 63%

Question Trainer 7 - 62%

I DID NOT DO EVERY QUESTION TRAINER, its not even necessary to be honest. i didnt do any readiness exams or any of that. if u listened to the hurst lectures everyday, that is your content and you will be fine.

So how did my nclex go?

30 SATA

10 Reorder questions

3 Med calc

6 Ehibit

0 Hotspot

0 Listen

1 Cardiac Rythym question

the rest were multiple choice

EVERYTHING THAT I STUDIED WAS NOT ON THE EXAM!!!! SO STOP MEMORIZING CONTENT!! i had a lot of professionalism questions like evidence based practice and malpractice.. which shocked the hell out of me. cuz i didnt study it.

but i passed. you will pass. i left that room thinking i failed because honest to god the questions were so hard i didnt know *** they were asking me but i passed.

gonna sound corny but visualize you telling everyone you passed, put it out to the universe that you will be a nurse, and you will post here and pass. if you see question 76, you are still in the game keep your wits about you.

Do you think Hursts is the reason your questions trainer scores were high?? I failed after just using Kaplan which I know was a mistake. I actually got my money back for them, so that's was good. I can out it towards other resources.

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our school used ATI, my ATI predictor said that i had a 93% chance of passing the nclex before i even opened a book to study (the rest of my class didnt fair so well).

When i did kaplan qbanks i was scoring mid 60's from the start. throughout school i always focused on knowing why rather than memorizing symptoms.

a great example is - cushings: causes hypernatremia and hypokalemia, but if you dont understand why it causes that then you dont have an understanding of cushings you are just memorizing facts.

Hurst lectures focus on learning about why and it really solidified my understanding of the processes behind diseases. As for pharm i was always good with pharm.

study to understand rather than cram for facts and things will just click and make sense. and dont second guess yourself on questions. if something doesnt make sense, dont select it! your brain didnt forget what you learned in school its all in there, and when you are trying to pull from the depths of your knowledge dont second guess yourself. trust you confidently know the information.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
so i posted on the forum a couple of days ago with my scores and i was pretty nervous but i went and took it test cut off at 75 questions, did the Pearsonvue trick got the good pop up, checked my quick results today and i passed.

passed on the first time, so how did i do it?

i got my hands on the hurst review lectures, and i listened to 2 of them everyday from december (my graduation) till about february 20th. if you know somebody that has access to hurst review they can send you the lectures or you can record them using software on your computer while they play and circulate them through your school (its illegal but do what you must to pass).

I bought the kaplan qbank - ONLY THE QBANK NOTHING ELSE - for 299 and i did 50 questions a day and really focused on reading the rationales. If i got questions right i wanted to know why i got it right and if i got them wrong i made a list of things and i researched it for the rest of the day to learn about it. also i always did the exams timed. the reason you SHOULD NOT do the tests with the rationales available at anytime because in the actual nclex you wont have rationales available mid test. also the rationales you read mid test will skew your scores higher and give you false reassurance about your grades. I was starting with about 60% and toward the end i was getting around 70-78% (unused questions only i never went back and redid questions)

Around 1 week before my test i did question trainers which i found online and downloaded/converted to word document format. i would circulate it to you all but its illegal, i know they have websites that you can view them in pdf format but you cant download them. trust me on this - after a week of searching on google for hours there is a website where you can download every single question trainer!!

my QT scores were as follows

Question Trainer 1 - 76%

Question trainer 2 - 70%

Question trainer 3 - 63%

Question Trainer 7 - 62%

I DID NOT DO EVERY QUESTION TRAINER, its not even necessary to be honest. i didnt do any readiness exams or any of that. if u listened to the hurst lectures everyday, that is your content and you will be fine.

So how did my nclex go?

30 SATA

10 Reorder questions

3 Med calc

6 Ehibit

0 Hotspot

0 Listen

1 Cardiac Rythym question

the rest were multiple choice

EVERYTHING THAT I STUDIED WAS NOT ON THE EXAM!!!! SO STOP MEMORIZING CONTENT!! i had a lot of professionalism questions like evidence based practice and malpractice.. which shocked the hell out of me. cuz i didnt study it.

but i passed. you will pass. i left that room thinking i failed because honest to god the questions were so hard i didnt know *** they were asking me but i passed.

gonna sound corny but visualize you telling everyone you passed, put it out to the universe that you will be a nurse, and you will post here and pass. if you see question 76, you are still in the game keep your wits about you.

Congratulations. Welcome to job hunting.

Sent from my iPhone using allnurses.com

Up Vote Up Vote ×
our school used ATI, my ATI predictor said that i had a 93% chance of passing the nclex before i even opened a book to study (the rest of my class didnt fair so well).

When i did kaplan qbanks i was scoring mid 60's from the start. throughout school i always focused on knowing why rather than memorizing symptoms.

a great example is - cushings: causes hypernatremia and hypokalemia, but if you dont understand why it causes that then you dont have an understanding of cushings you are just memorizing facts.

Hurst lectures focus on learning about why and it really solidified my understanding of the processes behind diseases. As for pharm i was always good with pharm.

study to understand rather than cram for facts and things will just click and make sense. and dont second guess yourself on questions. if something doesnt make sense, dont select it! your brain didnt forget what you learned in school its all in there, and when you are trying to pull from the depths of your knowledge dont second guess yourself. trust you confidently know the information.

Thank you so much for this. I agree with you. I usually study to understand as well. I find that more interesting also. It also takes more time. Im going to be more prepared this time around. :)

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you'll be fine! study hard and pass :D

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and thanks to everyone that told me congrats :)

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Thank you to everyone for the good tips and good advice I received on this site.

I took the NCLEX this a.m., got 75 questions and the good popup, so I am hopeful. Hoping that I have been successful, I wanted to pass a few points along:

1. I studied Saunders and Exam Cram questions and rationale. If I needed content, I went primarily to reliable online sources or some textbooks.

2. I studied about two hours a day for 3 months.

3. I recommend memorizing ABGs (O2, CO2, pH, HCO3, etc), EKG, Cranial Nerves, Infection Control, (My chicken hez TB, Spiderman, Mrs. Vee and VChips for sure) Basic Labs (platelets, WBC, RBC, K, Na, Glucose, etc) and restraint procedures.

4. As I got closer to number 75 on the test, I prayed to get more questions, because I was sure I was failing. When it turned off at 75, I wanted to cry hysterically. If the good pop up worked for me, then my experience was the same as so many others: you leave the exam feeling like you failed it miserably, and you might have passed.

5. I got my first SATA at question number 6, and got one every third or fourth question after that. I got one pretty tough math calculation towards the end. My last five questions were not SATA questions.

Good luck to all; I am in an early result state, so will let you know in a couple of days if I passed.

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