NCLEX was easy

Students NCLEX

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Just thought I would share my NCLEX experience. As I am sure I have in common with all of you during nursing school all you heard was NCLEX this, or NCLEX that. I did ok in school, but the way they made NCLEX sound I thought it was going to be insanely hard. My issue with nursing school was the form of the questions. It was harder for me to try and decipher what it was the questioner wanted to know, than it was to answer the question. If it was straight knowledge or judgement questions I would have done much better than what I did do. I chalked it up to "Well, if this is what NCLEX is like I need to get better at deciphering intent and just deal with it".

NCLEX was nothing like any of the tests I took in nursing school. The way the questions were phrased it was very clear to me what it was that they wanted to ask/test me for. It was by far the easiest test in nursing I have ever taken. I won't lie and say I winged it w/o studying. I finished 2200 questions on Uworld and put a lot of time in preparing for it. I thought I was prepared going in, but you never know.

I finished in 75 questions. When I got done I was like "Is that it?" I am a very hypertensive person who has a lot of stress. If there is something to worry about, I will worry about it. However after it cut me off at 75 there was only about 2 percent doubt that I may have failed. I knew I had owned that test.

Here is my complaint. What I did not like about nursing school and Uworld (and what I struggled with most) was the way questions were framed so that I had to guess at what the questioner was asking. I hated that aspect of it, but if I wanted to pass NCLEX I had better learn it (or so I thought). After taking NCLEX and seeing how questions were actually phrased I am a bit upset. Why were questions phrased to be deliberately misleading or vague in school when NCLEX did not phrase questions that way?

Anyway, I am not going to lose sleep over it but it does kind of annoy me. I am curious if anyone knows what percentage of people finish NCELX in 75. It is just for bragging rights, but I would still be interested to know.

NICU Guy, BSN, RN

4,161 Posts

Specializes in NICU.

I was told throughout nursing school how tough NCLEX was going to be. Between the start of my last semester and NCLEX, I had done 2000 questions in preparations of the test. The days leading up to test day was filled with anxiety. I started the test at 9am and it shut off at 75 questions after an hour. My very first thought after I left the room was "That's it? I spent all this time worrying about this test and this is it?" Half of my cohort 15/29 passed NCLEX at 75 questions.

Tdizzle

17 Posts

Hello, you got lucky because I thought it was the most hardest exam I have ever taken in my life. I am a 3.8 GPA student with a master degree and have been in the field of health for 10 years (but this doesnt mean anything). I am just saying that out of the 20 years of my schooling, the NCLEX was definitely the hardest. Some people get really lucky with easier questions and there are some people who are just extremely bright to where they would understand any complex question. The questions are definitely unlike UWOrld @ 95%. I dont know if I passed yet as I just took my exam a couple days ago so cant provide my percentage. But congrats to you, glad you did well!

RNNPICU, BSN, RN

1,266 Posts

Specializes in PICU.

Anyway, I am not going to lose sleep over it but it does kind of annoy me. I am curious if anyone knows what percentage of people finish NCELX in 75. It is just for bragging rights, but I would still be interested to know.

75 is just a number and does not mean anything different that 76, 80, 140, or 265. Out of a new grad group of 30, 3 were repeat test takers and failed their first time at 75. 75 is not like getting a 100% on a test and the other numbers are less. So bragging rights of 775 questions, not really anything to brag about.

But... Congratulations on passing the NCLEX!! That is a bragging right. Passing is a huge deal

car48

36 Posts

Maybe I got easier questions, maybe not. Just took it the one time so I have no basis for comparison. People had spoken really highly of Uworld so that is what I chose to be my main study aid. I guess the sheer amount of questions may have helped me, but the only definitive thing they had in there that I know helped was the order questions. I had every order question memorized from Uworld and that helped me with NCLEX, and I may be wrong but I think those are classified as harder questions. They make a big deal about not saying anything about what specifically was on the test, so I won't.

The types of questions I got in school that drove me insane were ones that were deliberately vague. I know what clay colored stool means. It was gone over in class, it was in the notes, it was in the book. When it came to the test the question about it the stool was described as "brownish clay". Nothing was described that way in class, in the notes, or in the book. NCLEX did not have that kind of speculative nonsense. It was just "the stool is clay colored, what does that mean?" (I used that because that question was not on NCLEX, for me at least anyway).

hopetopassnclex

257 Posts

Maybe I got easier questions, maybe not. Just took it the one time so I have no basis for comparison. People had spoken really highly of Uworld so that is what I chose to be my main study aid. I guess the sheer amount of questions may have helped me, but the only definitive thing they had in there that I know helped was the order questions. I had every order question memorized from Uworld and that helped me with NCLEX, and I may be wrong but I think those are classified as harder questions. They make a big deal about not saying anything about what specifically was on the test, so I won't.

The types of questions I got in school that drove me insane were ones that were deliberately vague. I know what clay colored stool means. It was gone over in class, it was in the notes, it was in the book. When it came to the test the question about it the stool was described as "brownish clay". Nothing was described that way in class, in the notes, or in the book. NCLEX did not have that kind of speculative nonsense. It was just "the stool is clay colored, what does that mean?" (I used that because that question was not on NCLEX, for me at least anyway).

Congratulations! and thanks for your honest input. This will surely help to calm down so many.

car48

36 Posts

75 is just a number and does not mean anything different that 76, 80, 140, or 265. Out of a new grad group of 30, 3 were repeat test takers and failed their first time at 75. 75 is not like getting a 100% on a test and the other numbers are less. So bragging rights of 775 questions, not really anything to brag about.

But... Congratulations on passing the NCLEX!! That is a bragging right. Passing is a huge deal

My understanding of how NCLEX works is there is a certain basic criteria you have to meet. I am keeping this example simple, so please no hating on me.

As a standard lets say they want you to know that the heart has 4 chambers. The first question may be "how many chambers does the heart have". If you say 4, they than may ask you something harder like "what is the left ventricle". If you say 3 they may ask you what is the function of the heart. If you got the ventricle question right they would say "He knows cardio... move on". If you got the function of the heart wrong they would follow it up with "Where is the heart in the chest". The more you get those questions wrong, the more they have to ask you to see if you know the min.

If they throw a psyche question on you about depression and you get it wrong the next question may be about Bi-polar. If you get that wrong they may than ask you about borderline. In the end the test can be forgiving because it wants to confirm you know something about psyche... and if depression isn't your thing something else might be. It would be unreasonable to expect us to be able to regurgitate everything we learned in nursing school in a single test. That being said I think it is more impressive to not be asked follow up questions because you got the first ones wrong.

That is the way it was explained to me anyway. Ultimately you are right that everyone has to have the same level of knowledge to pass NCLEX in 75 or 265. However the less you answer in does mean something. Your employer could care less, but it is a nice self pat on the back IMO.

I would give this advice to people going to take it. The test can be long as hell if you want it to be. In the beginning take your time, you have plenty of it. Questions I knew that I knew the answer to I re-read several times before committing to it. Because I did that, on a couple of questions I caught myself from making a mistake. If you have to take the whole 265 adjust how you spend your time as your time is getting short.

I also thought that the NCLEX was easy...too easy... almost stupid easy!

I skipped 2-3 questions since I didn't know them and knew I felt good about my previous answers and I still passed at 77!

So when I read on here that there are multiple test takers who don't pass till on the 3rd, 4th, or 5th try, I'm gravely concerned. I felt that the questions asked on the NCLEX was everything I learned in fundamentals first semester. I had exams in nursing school that were multiple times harder than the NCLEX.

I have a close family friend who is an MD and I was telling her about taking the NCLEX and she said, "You know what a student with a D (letter grade) is right? A nurse." I was a bit upset by her response/attempt of encouragement but after taking the NCLEX it totally made sense.

KelRN215, BSN, RN

1 Article; 7,349 Posts

Specializes in Pedi.

I agree, it was easy. I was in and out in 45 minutes. 75 questions. I had no doubt that I passed.

Sierra Nurse

14 Posts

In my experience, the primary benefit of Uworld for practice was the constant stream of SATA questions. When I sat the for the NCLEX, I believe 35 or so of my questions were of the SATA variety. My achilles heel through nursing school was OBGYN, and NCLEX has the ability to find weaknesses and dig at them (I started getting a string of those types of questions.) For what its worth, I passed 1st time with 75 questions.

Lanntis, BSN

103 Posts

Specializes in Psychiatry.

Mine is next week and I have begun the freakout stage. I took a month off school in August like we were told not to (accelerated program and I needed to take a step back before I had a nervous breakdown.) I started uworld sept 5th and I've got 550 questions left. I'm averaging around 58-62% overall. I find uworld pretty freaking hard for me. I'm awful at peds, ob, and anything baby related in general. The SATA, I get maybe 3 or 4 right out of every 10?

I only bought the one "assessment" so I haven't used it yet, sometime this week. Any advice on how to get through this? Almost my whole cohort has passed already, and here I am still paralyzed. I always go randomly do the kaplan question of the day on their site and get it wrong. Its very different than the uworld way of asking things.

I need this over with...the field of psychiatry needs me. Hah.

anneaw

24 Posts

75 is just a number and does not mean anything different that 76, 80, 140, or 265. Out of a new grad group of 30, 3 were repeat test takers and failed their first time at 75. 75 is not like getting a 100% on a test and the other numbers are less. So bragging rights of 775 questions, not really anything to brag about.

But... Congratulations on passing the NCLEX!! That is a bragging right. Passing is a huge deal

While I don't think anyone should brag about passing the NCLEX at 75 questions - the fact is, someone who passes at 75 questions is significantly above the passing standard. Someone who fails at 75 is significantly below the passing standard. That information is explained on the NCSBN site.

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