Damn..flunked my nclex for the 2nd time

How did you use HurstRiview to study for your second exam? Also did you do everything that she said to do? Last how long did you study everything?

Lots of student's experience this. Yes it's great to know physiology but you better beef up your critical thinking skills. NCLEX is not going to give you recognition/memorization type questions. I like Saunders because the foundational knowledge that it gives will help you figure out some tricky situations.

How many questions did you have? If you don't mind me asking

Are you challenging NCLEX- PN or RN? If pn, you must update the Saunder's cd to version 5.

Hey - Dennis - sorry to hear. You must be very frustrated. I wonder if you want to try changing how you study, like signing up for a course? I apologize if you are already familiar with the how the NCLEX is graded, but if the machine shut off at 85 it may mean that you are not even getting to the more difficult questions where you have a chance of passing. See below.

A friend of mine, not a great test taker, recently passed and felt the test strategies learned in a course then practicing thousands of questions on an online computer program made the difference.

Best of luck to you. Do not give up!!

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Your NCLEX exam is graded in an adaptive form as well. Check out the following picture while reading this description. You start off with easy questions and are at the midline of the yellow block. If you get an easier question right, you get a point in the positive direction (towards the green), while if you get an easy one wrong you get 5 points in the negative direction (towards the red). If you get the easier one right, you get a harder one that will give you 2 points in the positive direction, and if wrong, 4 points in the negative direction. As you continue to get questions right, you move to harder and harder ones, where eventually you will get 5 points in the positive direction for a correct answer, and only 1 point in the negative direction for a wrong one. For incorrect questions you also move to easier and easier questions, which as stated, are worth less for correct and more for incorrect. At 75 questions the computer does an analysis of your trend line and if you are in the green at this point you are done and have passed your NCLEX exam, usually with greater than 58% correct. If you are in the red at this point you are done and have failed your NCLEX, usually with less than 42% correct. If you are located in the yellow, your NCLEX examination continues until the next random trend checkpoint.

I'm sorry about your not passing.

Honestly I took the NCLEX PN after doing the Hurst review, and I would say that it is not a waste of money. It teaches you content that some may not have learned in school, and make things a little easier to remember. That said, it doesn't matter how much content you have if, your critical thinking isn't up to par.

I passed the PN in 45 minutes, with 85 questions, and found it to be easy. I had lots of pharm that I had no clue about, as well as other content; but I have always been able to think my way through things.

So, if you want to use Saunders or Kaplan, go ahead, but honestly I think you should start doing 20 to 50 questions at a time, first spending a lot of time on the questions, dissecting it, and using the hurst strategies where applicable (least invasive first, pain never killed, the killer answer, what can you do now, ect).

Then going over the rationales, but don't just read them. Pick them apart with the questions to see how you could have thought your way through to the correct answer, or how you could have chosen the best guess.

I do not like to study, I procrastinate, and get off track easily, I even rushed through and skipped some of the Hurst videos, but I still passed. Knowing "some content", and being able to think critically will get you very far on the NCLEX.

Those things, the infection control mnemonic, and LaCharity (and you really don't need this unless you don't have a grip at all on management and delegation), should really be all that you need for NCLEX-PN. It is not a difficult test at all, the questions just aren't straight forward.

Good Luck.

Sorry to hear you did not pass, I know the Nclex is a test that you can't explain. I passed the first time with 75 questions. I did not work while preparing for the Nclex and I just focused on that. I did watch the Hurst review and I printed the book that comes with it, I think that it was great to remember stuff from nursing school that I did not remember and I did watch the videos twice. Also, I did use the Lacharity book that has a lot of priority and delegation questions and I think that it helped me with the delegation and priority questions from Nclex. My test was mainly focused on priority questions like what patient would you see first, but you need to know as well the medical stuff to made the decision. I also used the Cram book with the questions that comes with 5 tests with 250 questions each, I found the first test easy but the other ones were not and the good thing is that the questions make you think and open your mind. I have some friends that paid for Kaplan and few of them passed others not. The people that passed some of them told me that was because of Kaplan, others told me that it was a waste of money and they were passed without Kaplan. Personally I think that is an individual decision and if you have the extra money to pay for that I would pay for the questions bank only. I also paid for 3 weeks online NCSBN http://learningext.com that was $50 and the questions they have I think were harder than Nclex, but I thought that 3 weeks was not enough since this program has too much stuff like content and questions, so at the end I focus in the questions mainly. At the beginning I did not know what to do to prepare for Nclex, I have the Saunders and I did the calendar, but I was not able to follow and I got tired and bored and the questions in Saunders are much easier than the other stuff I used. Finally, I think that you need to know the content first and then start doing tons of difficult questions, so when you take Nclex again it will be so easy, I just wish you the best and good luck!!!!