NCLEX - my experience

[anneaw]

Just found out I passed NCLEX. 75q 1 hour and 10 minutes. No one specific topic stood out: a couple meds, a couple peds, no maternity (my weaknesses that I gave extra time to). My test was very well rounded regarding material.

A third SATA, 1 med calc, 2 drop and drag, 1 identify on body.

The test was very difficult. I had no idea wtf was going on. I never heard of most of the stuff and my entire test was educated guesses. I used critical thinking extensively. It was the weirdest test. I had no idea whether I passed or not. I did not know what to think.

Background - BSN graduate, A- student, quick learner.

Study Method - Hurst Live Review (2 weeks) and Uworld (3 weeks). 5 weeks. (ATI in school, basically found it useless.)

Scores: Hurst - baseline 70/125. week 2 73/125, week 3 83/125 (1 week Uworld), week 4 85/125 (2 week uworld).

Uworld: 1st pass: 58% correct 70 something percentile - 2.5 weeks. Most tests between 60-68. A few 40's and a couple 70's. Redid all incorrect - 63% 86th percentile.

1st assessment: After 1.5 week, 1000 q's 49%, 24th percentile Borderline. Bad day. Should have waited to take it, but I was impatient and wanted to stick to my study plan.

2nd assessment: after almost 3 weeks of studying uworld, 1600 q's 66% 89th percentile Very high chance of passing.

My thoughts: Hurst was great on core content, but I got bored after two weeks. I did purchase Elevate and found it useful. I think Hurst has a very solid program. I learned a lot better through them than my nursing school. Excellent at boiling things down. I did about 400 of their practice questions. Then switched to uworld.

Uworld: Outstanding program for SATA and critical thinking. I did a majority of mine in tutor mode because it helped me to correct my thinking immediately if I was not viewing something properly. I also found doing a bunch of rationales at once exhausting. Toward the end, I did some in test mode, but I much preferred tutor mode. Uworld really helped me focus in on my weaknesses. I scored very low on pharm at first. Moderately low on ped and maternity (30% percentile), so I went back to hurst and restudied the chapters. Next check on maternity stats, I had gotten the next 35 out of 36 of the questions right! Highly recommend Hurst. In the beginning, I did a few tests by subject (pharm, ped, maternity- which may be why my scores were so low) then I switched to random.

My thoughts: Know your core content very well. Know how systems interact. Know critical thinking. Know your weaknesses. DO not focus on overall score - but individual scores on subjects. Uworld is very good at breaking it down for you. Redo your incorrect questions. After uworld, I found my brain was on autopilot for critical thinking. I also found SATA much easier and I started to prefer them.

Good luck everybody.

Also, I received research questions at the end. Let's just say I am ecstatic not to be taking the new NCLEX next year. They were very complex and had tons of answers applicable to the SATA case studies.

[2016srnfcc]

that is great news congrats