My NCLEX-RN strategies, stats, stories, and prayer

18 Posts

Hi there,

I've just found out today that I passed my NCLEX-RN with only 75 questions, first time taken. Graduated May 2011. Before I took the NCLEX, I suffered huge self-doubt. Plus, no one in my family is in health care. I was very unfamiliar with the health care industry. Yet, I had huge support.

This is my prayer:

Since NCLEX-RN is an exam to test whether I can safely deliver care, I can only pass if I can safely deliver care. If I can't safely deliver care, I fail and that means that I can't safely deliver care yet and the last thing I want is to ignorantly harm a pt. So, I'd rather fail and study hard and more to safely deliver care than pray to just pass and still feel very incompetent about myself to make nursing judgement and practice nursing.

Once the exam reached 70s questions, I felt like I did a whole lot of careful critical thinking, I prayed that dear Lord, if I pass this exam, I would keep continue to study to keep my critical thinking going and my knowledge utilized every day. Please, let me pass.

This is what I did:

June 2011: studied only pharmacology. I used Phunny Pharm book. Would not really recommend it because it's more prone to general science than nursing applications. It doesn't have nursing implications. Yet, it has concise and clear explanations. I like it tho. Pharmacology was a weak subject of mine when I first studied it in nursing school. So, I wanted to make sure that I know every single drug name and their classes. I learned about 800+ drug names in June. Still in denial state of the 'impending' NCLEX, just carefully learned the drug names with no nursing implications.

July 2011: did 1000+ questions from Kaplan QBank in tutor mode. I made careful and expanded note for each question and rationale. Still in denial state of the 'impending' NCLEX. Did not try to remember much from the notes, just make careful notes.

Studied extra drug names with nursing implications. In total, I've learned about 1000+ drug names and its nursing implications. I learned only classes for nursing implications. I learned digoxin and lithium for explicit nursing implications.

3 q trainers.

August 2011: Read the whole Kaplan NCLEX-RN book and tried to visualize every single word. Felt pretty confident about the content. I then moved on to listen to Kaplan lectures. Started to feel startled that I just studied for fun and did not study strategically. It was painful to realize that I wasted my 2 months. At first, it took me 2-4 days to finish 1 chapter. Later, I paced and finished 2 online video chapters in 1 day (had no choice). I finished all lectures only 1 day before the exam date. Did not have enough time to finish all the q trainers. Finished all online video lectures. I made picture notes for the developmental stages for infants and children. I did not finish the online video lecture for the test readiness. Feeling scared.

Tried to understand notes and memorize notes.

1 days before the exam: woke up imagining my transformation to a nurse. I'm a nurse. How does it feel like? I asked myself.

The exam date: reviewed some notes, read 1 qtrainer with rationales. Did my special exam ritual before going to the test room to do the exam.

STATS:

My diagnostic Kaplan score (in June): 50%

all qbank quesions (1000+) score: 58% (in July)

q trainer 1: 62.67% (in July)

q trainer 2: 65% (in July)

q trainer 3: 59% (in July)

did not do other q trainers.

This is what I'd do differently:

- Study Pharm names in 2 weeks only

If I do Kaplan online again:

- Do all Qtrainers first before starting Kaplan online videos to feel the flow of NCLEX-RN questions. And, that will help to make sure that you'll have your money back if you didn't pass the NCLEX-RN.

- Read the Kaplan coursebook briefly and critically. It's not a very well organized book in my opinion. Even tho it has nice charts and so, it doesn't connect things together. It only has facts. You have to rationalize and connect the dots together yourself. It's helpful that it makes you connect the dots yourself but it's painful to have to go through all the processes by yourself instead of having someone guide you through.

- Make your own charts ONLY on subjects you're not familiar with.

- Do online lectures to see where you've missed your points.

- Memorize notes

I'd rather do Kaplan in class so that I know what to do instead of figuring out what to do on my own

My exam stats:

I only had 1 question on OB, 1 question on Ped, a lot of SATAs, 3-5 meds, 3-5 psych, the rest is med-surg, I guess. No med calc., no audio, no pix.

My exam strategies:

- My exam ritual right before the exam worked for me. Find out what worked for you in previous exams. I think it's different for everyone. I used the one that worked for me for previous exam success.

- Kaplan decision tree

- Think about each answer NO MATTER WHAT. Resist the temptation to choose what my impulse thinks is the first answer. There might be a better answer. Think about each answer right or wrong at least twice.

- If an answer is in doubt and other 3 questions are wrong, the in-doubt answer is correct.

- If an answer is correct and 1 question is in doubt, it's most likely that the correct answer is correct. Still, think about the in-doubt question to make sure it's worse than the correct answer. The correct answer is usually the best answer.

- If there's a question about sth that I don't know, I can connect the info. together. If I can't connect info. together, I can rationalize each answer with my existent knowledge. I will be able to make the most educated guess no matter what. No wild or blind guess. I can eliminate at least 1 answer no matter what. I studied a lot.

- There's 1 drug I don't know (yes, despite my confidence of 1000+ drug names), I don't know that drug. That's expected. No suffix, no prefix, no clues. I looked at the answer and eliminate each based on my knowledge on other drugs and the correlations between each info.

- Blind guess, wild guess, impulsive guess are NOT acceptable.

- If this answer is right, the other answer is also right but I can only choose 1 answer, so, that means both of them are wrong for the question. And, I made sure that I made the right correlation. If this answer is wrong, the other answer is also wrong. Make sure you make the right relationship between the two.

- If one answer you're pretty sure that it's for another condition but you don't know whether it's for this condition or not, it's very likely that it's not for this condition, eliminate it.

- It took me 3.5 hrs to finish 75 questions.

- Attitude: 'til I die

Win, lose, or tie

After the exam:

- My computer was formatted, all is lost. Nothing is left! It's not what I did, it just happened due to some mysterious causes...

- Felt elated

- Still keep studying

Materials used:

- Kaplan online

- Allnurses.com

- Phunny Pharm book

- Google

- My brain

- My ritual

- My belief

~ Luckystar, RN, BSN :nurse:

PS: Peason Vue Trick works.

Thx to everyone on this Forum :nurse:

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darlenesky

27 Posts

Aug 31, 2011

CONGRATULATIONS!!!! so happy for you!!! my exam is next week and i feel like im not yet ready... huhu... just been self studying.... i dont know what to do... but im happy for you!:yeah:congratz again!