My NCLEX story

I always knew that when I passed the NCLEX I would share my story with this great community. I just wanted to tell my journey from school to exam day.

I graduated from my ASN program this past December. I would've graduated last May but I failed third semester (which was maternal newborn and pediatrics). My programs' director warned me that repeating students not only faired worse on the nclex, but most would not make it to graduation. I was one of six students to repeat that semester (the other five, who I got to know very well, did not graduate unfortunately).

After graduating in December I took several weeks off to enjoy the holiday season. I flew down to Florida to spend time with my mother and the rest of my family. After so many long hours of lectures, clinicals, and preceptor hours, I was happy to put nursing on hold for a few weeks.

My school does not submit the paperwork to the state until mid January, which meant my ATT would not arrive until late January. I received my ATT on January 20th, and selected February 25th for the NCLEX. I wanted at least 4 weeks where I could prepare myself.

Before getting into how I studied, I just wanted to add that my school required ATI. I did not care much for ATI, and honestly felt it was not worth $275 per semester. But my school required it so there wasn't anything I could do. At the end of every semester we would take an exam that would tell us how ready we were for the NCLEX. I never did well on them. Level one's and one level two. At the end of the program we took their predictor test. At the time I didn't realize how important this test was. It was scheduled smack dab in the middle of two final exams and it was the last thing I cared about. The predictor test was 5% of your final average. If you scored below 90% probability of passing the NCLEX on your first try, you had to do remediation. For those not familiar, the exam is 185 questions. The results would generate a % probability of passing the NCLEX on your first try. I didn't put a lot of effort into studying for this exam. In fact, I finished it quite fast. My results were dismal. I had an embarrasing 53% chance of passing the NCLEX on my first try, one of the lowest in my class. My closest friends all had 90% or higher.

I spent many sleepless nights thinking about that 53%. I knew that I needed to put that exam behind me and study.

Here is what I did in the four weeks between scheduling my boards and the day of the exam: QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS, and MORE QUESTIONS.

I purchased the following resources to aide me:

-Saunders Comprehensive Review

-RN Mastery App

-Lacharity Priority, Delegation, and Assignment

-ATI

My study routine was sparatic. Some days I would study content though Saunders, and then some days I would study a particular topic (blood gases and isolation for example). But one element that stayed the same every day was practice questions. I did on average about 100 questions a day, sometimes more. In the end I did close to 1,700 practice questions from all the sources I listed above.

I highly recommend the Lacharity book. It's cheap, it's well designed, and it comes with online access. I didn't always agree with some of the questions and rationales in Lacharity (more than once I found myself throwing the book across the room) but I learned so much about delegation that I didn't learn from school. Saunders was great for content (my NCLEX was almost 90% med/surg!). The RN mastery app was great for questions but they seemed to be very easy or impossibly hard. I finished almost the entire question bank with 57% correct. I also used ATI for questions because I still had access to their question banks for a little longer. I even found a practice 150 question exam that they called the "NCLEX final" and scored a 68% on.

If I could recommend only one thing, it's to do practice questions. No matter where you get them from, if you're constantly reading and answering questions, you are exposing yourself to content.

After four weeks of studying, I was confident I was ready. I spent the day before the exam just going over lab values and isolation precautions (No heavy studying, no questions).

My NCLEX was nothing like I thought it would be. I was expecting impossible topics on diseases I've never heard of. It wasn't like that at all. A majority of my questions were simple med/surg. I had 11 select all that apply, one dose calc, and four charts.

An hour and a half in, at question 75, the exam shut off. I felt an unbelievable sense of relief. There were so many questions that I thought I was doing well on, I was certain I passed. Serval hours after taking the exam I received the "good pop up." Two days later I found out I passed. I had accepted a telemetry position several weeks early that was contingent on passing the NCLEX that I did not tell friends or family about. It felt so amazing to not only tell every one that I passed but that I had accepted a job.

I hope this didn't come off as bragging. I just wanted to tell you my story from almost failing out of nursing school to passing the NCLEX. If I can do it, so can you!

P.S. Take that ATI predictor exam