My NCLEX story

Gopixburgh · Oct 18, 2017

Hi everyone! Ever since I started nursing school back in May I have been a frequent reader on this site. I want to thank everyone for being so active and giving great advice because you not only help the OP but the people like me who read these posts.

So I decided I wanted to return the favor and maybe help/ease the minds of people about to take or who recently took their NCLEX.

My school required me to do the Kaplan prep. I graduated in August and didn't start really doing sets of questions until mid September. I would take sets of 75 most of the time and do just one a day and then review the rationales. Occasionally I would do a couple sets if I was free for the whole day. I did this through the week days and took the weekends off. I believe when I took my exam I had about 650 questions in the Qbank left. Other than questions, I reviewed the "Remar Review" book which is like 20 bucks on amazon. I did question trainers 4 (scored a 60) and 5 (scored a 58) as well as the readiness exam (scored a 60). I would also recommend taking the exam which is only over priority questions.

I took my exam this past Monday 10/16. I probably didn't go the best route and thought I would end at 75. So, my first big recommendation is to prepare and condition yourself to take all 265 because that is exactly what happened to me. Questions wouldn't stop coming and I felt like I was having a panic attack. I definitely freaked myself out mid exam. After my exam I thought FOR SURE I failed. Along with many others, my Kaplan advisor told us questions 265 determines your fate if you pass or fail which after doing some research is completely false because I was 98% sure I missed my last question. I could be wrong but I believe it is if the question is considered passing level or not which determines the results. Well after I was finished I got the email afterwards from Pearson saying I tested, after that and about 4 hours after I finished I did the Pearson Vue trick. I got the "good pop up" and it must have worked because I PASSED MY NCLEX.

I really just just wanted to post this to tell people who may have had a similar situation like mine to not lose hope! Best of luck to future test takers and stay CALM AND FOCUSED!