Hello fellow and future nurses! Before going in to take the NCLEX for the third time, I promised myself that when I passed the beast I would post my experience to encourage and motivate others, as most of you did for me. So to begin with, I graduated in June 2012 and planned to take the NCLEX in August. My school offered Kaplan and so I decided to follow Kaplan's guide for a guaranteed pass. I studied to the best of my abilities and went into the testing center confident that I was going to pass. Well, 2 hrs and 75 questions later...FAILED! I went through the stages of grief, mainly stuck in the denial stage and finally decided that I needed to move forward. I scheduled my second test date for December. I knew I needed to try a new method of studying as Kaplan alone was not working for me. I purchased Saunders, LaCharity, and used kaplans Qbank questions. I studied for about a month and a half and knew the second time would be the charm. I walked in feeling prepared and confident that I would pass. This time...6hrs and 265 questions later..FAILED, again! Picking myself up after this defeat was extremely difficult. I could not find any motivation to move forward as I felt like I was doing my best and always coming up short. The one thing that pushed me to schedule my third testing date was knowing the difficulty of the exam was going to change beginning April 1st. I did not let this scare me but I definitely did not want to take the test after this date. So I scheduled my third date in March 2013. Of course I felt what most repeat test takers felt; like every ones life was moving forward while I felt stuck. I turned to motivation and advice at allnurses since you all are people who truly understand the road to becoming an RN. I read many threads, some motivational and some that only increased my anxiety. As soon as I felt prepared to study again, I purchased NCSBN learning extension's three week course. I mainly used them for their questions since I simply could not narrow my answers down to the better of two and knew I needed to build my strength in this area. And to be quit honest, I learned more content this time through answering the questions and reading the rationales. My course ended one week before my test date and for that remainder week I used NCLEX-3500 (free online) and answered 20 questions at a time answering about 150 questions a day. Although most say not to study the day before the exam, I did. I answered questions for about 3 hours and glanced over the study guide that I found on allnurses. On the day of I woke up excited and confident that this would be lucky 3! The test stopped at 75 questions and I knew walking out that I had to have passed. I had about 30 SATA questions, 5 drop down questions and the rest were mainly medications (psychiatric) and prioritization/who do you see first type of questions. I came home, did the PVT and finally got the good pop up! I ran around the house screaming and 48hrs later saw my name on the BRN website. I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and for those of you who are repeat test takers, do not lose motivation. Look in the mirror every day and tell yourself that you will soon be an RN, and believe it you will be! You must believe in yourself before anyone else does! I hope to have motivated at least one person! Good luck to everyone!
