NCLEX RN Experience - Passed

Published Nov 15, 2016

5 Posts

I just wanted to share my NCLEX experience since reading all the NCLEX threads on allnurses helped me tremendously!

I graduated from an accelerated Canadian RN program in August. I started studying on September 1st and wrote my exam on October 26th and passed. In hindsight I don't think I needed this much time, especially since by the end I was so bored/annoyed with studying and I even started forgetting what I reviewed in the very beginning. Ideally I think 4-6 weeks is adequate though everyone is different.

Study routine: Each week I worked at my part-time job for 3 days, studying after work as well as on my days off. I studied everyday with a mixture of UWorld, Saunders NCLEX RN Review and the NCLEX Mastery app. Out of all of these I believe that UWorld really prepared me the most for the NCLEX, not in terms of content, but in terms of getting used to the format of the exam.

UWorld: I bought a 2 month subscription to Uworld and tried to do an average of 40 questions per day, and then in the days leading up to the exam I did blocks of 75 questions consisting of my incorrect and marked questions. I "marked" all of my incorrect questions as well as all of the SATA questions because I really wanted to get used to answering SATA's before the exam. I averaged 69% after doing all 1970 or so questions, then when I re-answered all of the incorrect and marked questions, I finished at 75%. Your mark is not as important as reading all of the rationales and understanding them imo.

Saunders NCLEX RN: I found this to be a good review of the basics. I would study a chapter/system, taking some notes If I really felt like I needed to, and then I would do UWorld questions on that system the same day or the following days.

NCLEX Mastery App: This app was most helpful for the many mnemonics that it provided. The questions were okay but sometimes I found they focused too much on very specific details about diseases & information recall whereas UWorld was most useful since you had to think critically to answer their questions.

Test: The day before the test I did not study at all, in fact I went to the movies just to rest my mind after so much studying! My actual test was 75 questions, I had about 25-40 SATA. No audio, no video, no math questions. 1 question on lab values, maybe 5 pharmacology questions, several infection control and priority questions. At one point I was becoming really anxious because I kept getting a lot of maternity questions (amniotomy, amniocentesis and lady partsl birth after c-section to name a few, all SATA) and therefore I thought I was not doing well in that subject area. I found out later that just because you're receiving many questions from one area does not mean you're doing well or bad, wish I knew that before. When the test shut off at 75 questions I really didn't know what to feel though I definitely did not feel confident. There were maybe 6 questions from the entire test that I was sure of and the rest seemed like educated/gut-feeling guesses.

Got my results 6 days later (4 business days) in the mail, which felt like an eternity, and found out I passed :)

Summary: UWorld is awesome, critical thinking skills more important than trying to memorize specific details about everything nursing related, know bad myths about NCLEX before test and do not become anxious during test for any reason (easier said than done).

Good luck to all!