2nd Time Pass Sucess

[Nurse Katelyn BSN PCCN, RN]

Hello fellow Nurses and Future Nurses,

I just recently passed my NCLEX for the 2nd time and I wanted to share some helpful information for those who weren't successful the first attempt. After I didn't pass I looked around for help from others who had gone through the same experience I wasn't able to find anything. I failed in 75 questions, took a good hard look around and fixed my studying habits, then PASSED in 75 questions.

1st: Allow your self to grieve. It SUCKS not passing, seeing your friends pass is great but not being with them is also hard. I gave myself a week off to recover and relax. I should have rescheduled my test the night before but I didn't know I could and didn't think to ask. I spent the night before in the ER with my son, I found out I was pregnant the day before, and I was extremely tired when I took the test.

2nd: Look seriously at what went wrong. For me it's half content and half just knowing how to take the test. I wasn't doing enough practice questions at one time. Only 30 or so an I needed to be doing 75 then going back and looking at the answers right away. I also had a very negative tape playing in my head and I needed to stop listening to it. I was very anxious and could see myself failing and that's exactly what I did. Thinking positive the 2nd time really changed my strategy and helped me pass. God loves you, wants you to succeed and this test is just the last bump in your RN road.

3rd: Seriously look at Kaplan. It's a proven technique and it works. I had it the first time and I listen to too many people say it doesn't work or to try something else. I didn't do everything that Kaplan told me to do and I believe that's part of the reason I was successful I did the Hurst Review for content review and it was helpful but it didn't teach me how to take the test.

4th: I got a tutor or make a plan and stick with it. It was expensive but worth it for me. You don't need a tutor if you have a lot of discipline but with my family life I needed someone to tell me what to do. My tutor told me to practice 150 questions a day. She also looked at my Kaplan tests and told me what to work on, and praised me when I did something right. I remediated them right away and I took all the trainer tests again. I also watched some of the video's while I was doing content review. It's well worth the time.

5th and most Important: Think positive! You can pass, you will pass and you will be an awesome nurse.

Good luck everyone!

[futurefotorn]

how did you utilize kaplan better? i am currently using it for just pract ques.. what do you think?

[Nurse Katelyn BSN PCCN, RN]

The NCLEX was just like the QBank questions.

I was only doing 30-40 questions at a time before I took NCLEX for the first time. I was also using all the Q Bank questions and I did them enough I knew the answers to most of them and my test scores were artificially inflated.

I started to use the incorrect and unused test questions. My scores went down A LOT but I knew what I needed to focus on which was helpful. I used the Decision Tree of 95% of my questions too. It was a pain in the ass and time consuming but it I could see the difference in my scores when I was using the tree and taking my time and when I wasn't. I also remediated with the RN course book which was helpful. If the information I was looking for in the test question wasn't in the RN course book where I thought it should be I just wrote it in.

[amygarside]

This is a great tip. Thumbs up.

[2013rn2BScorpio]

Congratulations

[ks.angel]

Did you do they whole Kaplan program or just the questions?

[berhaelee]

Where did you get trainer test? I took my nclex for the first time last March 27th and I failed (i tried PVT). I m so sad today that i spent my whole day staring the ceilings.