Passed NCLEX - Kaplan Scores at the End.

fustudent610, BSN, RN, EMT-B

I used Kaplan to study for the NCLEX immediately after graduation. I was originally going to go with UWorld but there was an information session held by Kaplan and I was sold. I was drawn to the live review, as well as the idea of it being a nice little bundle of pre-selected questions, videos, a textbook, as well as randomized questions to routinely practice. I wanted more than 75 random questions a day. I wanted to progress, grow, and know I was ready. Not to mention my friend who graduated a year before said she used Kaplan, passed in 75, and KNEW she passed. I wanted that feeling.

So I did it. I had a great instructor, and it helped me see questions differently. I think the instructor makes or breaks it. I also think Kaplan had unrealistic expectations. We were supposed to read the book cover to cover and watch the 300+ short videos prior to doing questions. No. Just, no. It wasn't sticking like that, and it felt like it was just delaying things. So I stuck to questions.

Schedule

Monday - Thursday I would do 75q a day with the QBank. These are the randomized questions. After every exam, I would go through it question by question and write down EVERY SINGLE RATIONALE in a notebook. This part is critical. Sure I wrote down facts, the process of writing helped me memorize them. But what was so important was I wrote down WHY. Why did I pick that answer? Why did I get it wrong? Why did I get it right? Some people thought it was crazy, but I felt like I was taking the easy way out since I didn't have to read review books. It'd take about 2-3 minutes a question. I usually did a bunch of questions and took frequent breaks. But if I split it up into 35 and 35 it would probably take about 4 hours.

On Fridays I would do the Q Trainers. These are predetermined questions that grow in length and difficulty. They are NOT randomized. As they got over 100, I would need additional time to complete the remediations. Eventually I had to carry it over into Monday or even Tuesday when I was over 200 questions. I would take it a little easier over the weekend, going off and on Saturday but at the same time enjoying myself. Sunday I didn't do any remediation (but I might sneak some in). Looking back, I feel this wasn't wise. I learned that if I do ANY NCLEX prep, even if I take the afternoon and night off, it still is a study day.

Concerns

My approach was goal oriented, rather than specific times. As long as I got X done today, it was fine. I was worried that meant I wasn't focused enough. Also, sometimes remediation would carry over into the following day and I would get overwhelmed. Again, I was worried this meant a lack of focus on my part.

My other concern was if I was doing enough. Everybody else was doing questions and reading the books. I only used the book if it was something I had never heard of, or if it was something I knew that I had to get down (like PAD vs PVD). I put all my faith in the rationales.

My last concern was if I was backing the wrong horse. People were using UWorld and passing with it. And I was stuck with Kaplan, committed to questionable rationales. Some were short, some were confusing, and few had blatantly false information. But I saw it through and it paid off.

Burnout

Remember how I said remediations would rollover into the next day? Well this kept happening. Eventually I got a 47 on a QB and I practically had a stroke. I texted my friend and she told me to just stop and take a break for a couple days. I didn't want to because I was terrified that I would lose the momentum. But she was right. And honestly, I didn't know what else to do. So halfway through remediation I shut my notebook. It messed up my schedule. I would have to pick up the slack. But the fact of the matter is that I did burn out, and the only thing that mattered was to cool down. I took the remainder of that day off, as well as all of the next day.

The Comeback

I don't remember the exact day of the week this was, but I know that I did maybe one QB and had to take QT7 (the 265 question behemoth) that Friday. I wanted to do QT7 the Monday after, but it would have messed everything up. So I did the QB and that would determine if I was ready for QT7. I got a 61%. Not bad, it was a personal best for QBs. I was ready. I ended up getting a 59% and was devastated. But after remediating, I was so glad I got that 59% because that was when everything clicked.

I realized that I knew a ton of the answers I got wrong. I could have done better. That was when I told my girlfriend that I am going to try harder. I know what you're thinking, I should have been ALWAYS trying my hardest. But that's not how it was. It's easy to just go with an answer that feels right, even if you know it's not right. Where it gets picked because it's safe, despite deep down, your gut says it's wrong. I started reading and analyzing questions at a deeper level, and this paved the way to my success.

Moving Up

My QBs prior to that 47% were roughly 55%-59%. After they shot up from 61% to even 68%. Moreover, remediating felt like a chore at this point. Granted, remediation was always the worst part for me, but I was actually learning. After my scores shot up it just felt like I was going through motions and wasn't getting anything out of it. I didn't want to burn out again. This was my chance to tackle the NCLEX.

I told myself I will take the readiness exam. If I get roughly about a 65% then I will take the NCLEX the upcoming Tuesday. As I was taking it, I felt like I had jumped the gun. I felt like I was getting everything wrong except for some obvious ones. I was shocked when I saw that 69%. I took this on Friday, and rescheduled the NCLEX for Tuesday the 11th, as opposed to the 19th. I had to take it during this small window where I had the hunger to test. It was all I wanted to do. I didn't want to remediate, just test.

The Final Days

I remediated the readiness test, but I did NOT write it down. From this point forward I was done writing. There was just no point. On Saturday I did the Who Do You See First sample test and got an 83%, which is normal for that test. I also took the Alternate Format test and got a 48%. I was shocked. Most people get around a 20%-30%. It's a good thing I did well on that test, and you can probably guess why...

Another thing I did that I would 100% suggest is going to the NCLEX site and downloading their tutorial. It turns your computer into the NCLEX tutorial so you can become familiar with it. Why? Well, because the tutorial you download is EXACTLY the same as the NCLEX's. Same questions too. Not to mention, time you take in the tutorial WILL count against you. I did this once a day until the NCLEX.

On Saturday night I started winding down. I did my final two sample tests, finishing with a 66% and a 56%. Although I was half asleep for the final one, so it was kind of expected. This was it, no more questions!

On Sunday I went for a hike with my girlfriend and brushed over some stuff I knew I had to just memorize but never did. Like the vaccinations and fetal positioning. I didn't go crazy (although if you ask her she might say differently). This may seem crazy, but I actually had to wean myself off studying. This isn't something that people talk about, but after studying for two months straight it's not easy to just "stop".

On Monday I woke up early and did a test drive to the center. I soon realized it was a holiday so the traffic was inaccurate. But still, it was a good thing I did this. I was late leaving the house, I got lost, and I made plenty of mistakes. So I basically knew what NOT to do. Ironically I still got there on time, but I promise you had it been test day I would have panicked. I also continued weaning off. I studied a little, but ended up just stopping. I wasn't studying. Nope, no more. I was done... But I was still talking about the NCLEX and obsessing. I soon realized that this wasn't the correct result of "not studying". It was supposed to take my mind off it as a whole. So I changed gears. I walked about an hour into town and ate a burger. Why? Because I wanted to. It was MY day, so I did it! I set a ton of alarms and went to sleep that night. Kaplan suggests getting up early and also exercising so you can go to bed early. I had no issues sleeping.

The Day Of

I got up early and had a much better experience than the test run. I got to the test center earlier than expected, so I did some last minute studying (didn't help) and watched a video of a cow rolling a thing of hay (didn't help, still worth it). I saw other people going in so I joined them. There were about 4 of us, all there for different exams. We shared our horror stories of what was in store for us and wished each other luck. I left my phone and watch in the car, brought in snacks and drinks in case I was there for the long haul, and finally signed in. My heart was pounding so hard.

For some reason when I sat down, I was calm. People say they get terrified, pray, hear their heart beating. But I think I was the calmest I have ever been. I took the noise cancelling headphones and took the covers off (I thought they were disposable for some reason) but then realized they were to keep them clean. So before I even started the test I was fumbling around to get them back on. Then I did the tutorial, and as expected, I flew through it because it was exactly the same on their site.

My first question was SATA. It wasn't so bad. Then the next was SATA. It turned out over half my test was SATA. I didn't make marks because it might disrupt my thought process, but trust me when I say it was rarer to see a multiple choice. The test was simple, most questions being about a sentence long. I knew how the test worked, so I expected to get half of them wrong. I just accepted it, saw it for what it was, and moved on. It's designed to adapt to my knowledge level so I saw nothing wrong with getting a wrong answer because it was just trying to get an understanding of me, nothing more.

I could feel the questions getting closer and closer in difficulty as it locked on to my ability level. I didn't know if they were "hard", or if I just messed up by not knowing it. But I could tell sometimes when I was expected to get it right and wrong. No, I didn't try to read the system or beat it. I took every question and tried my hardest. Again, this wasn't to outsmart it. This was just to understand that it's okay to get some wrong. But I knew it would shut off at 75, and it did.

I didn't know how to feel after. It took about 90 minutes. I called my girlfriend and she asked when I take the test. I casually said I was done, and it wasn't so bad. She was shocked. The truth is it wasn't the hardest test I have taken. Yes it was packed with SATA, but I did so many in Kaplan that I felt it was... Fair. You hear of people leaving and crying their eyes out, but honestly I left and just went on with my day. Unfortunately, this didn't last long.

Post Test Anxiety

The day of the test wasn't so bad. I didn't worry too much about it, but it was always in the back of my mind. But this is when self-doubt started to simmer. "It was supposed to be the hardest test ever", "people feel like they guess", "it had tons of medications I haven't heard of", "people fail if they think it was easy". And that's when I started having problems. Tuesday night I started obsessing. Wednesday it was even worse. I chronically scavenged this website for peace of mind. When my girlfriend got home I looked like a mess and I greeted her with "So after hours of searching I found there's a 50% chance I passed". She was not amused.

There were two main things that ate away at my sanity, I'm posting them here because if you're doing what I did, then hopefully this can ease some of your fear. The first was the questions were too simple. Okay, so what? It's supposed to be simple. But they didn't feel like higher level, one of them literally asked me to recall something. But was it a recall? Obviously not, since I passed. But if I could talk to myself from the past I would say that it wasn't recall since it involved an assessment. While this question had no assessment data, a diagnosis WAS still presented, thus, an assessment. What I did tell myself was there was no way to know. There just wasn't. Yes, they were simpler than Kaplan questions, but let's be honest, not all Kaplan questions seemed like they were higher level. Yet they were. So if even some later ones were similar, wouldn't that be passing?

The other thing that ate away at my sanity was that I felt concerned about my management of care category not being up to par. If one wasn't, then I would fail! Okay, fine. So I thought back to all my questions that I felt fell under this section, and used my judgement on if they were right or wrong. Again, there's no way to know if they were from this category, and if they were right or wrong. But I tried and saw I got half of them right. So then I thought, isn't that's how it should be? It's designed to get half the questions wrong, so it shouldn't be a surprise. Not to mention, it'd probably spit out more questions.

Let me emphasize that the previous two paragraphs are speculation. It's to help people who are freaking out like I did and hopefully can help with peace of mind. I can't back it up with data, unfortunately.

Results

They didn't come 48 hours after I started my test. Obviously, I was freaking out. I thought it meant I failed since it took longer. I had to go somewhere and I didn't want to sit around and let it dictate my day. I was on the highway and people were texting me "DID YOU GET YOUR RESULTS?" It was around 9AM so I pulled over at a rest stop to reply. But before I did I checked quick results and they were in. I frantically put in my credit info. It hit me like a ton of bricks, pass. I cried, I was a sobbing snot-faced mess. And then everything hit me. Everything I had pent up for the last 15 months of nursing school. I cried harder. It was finally over. All I could think about was that it's finally over. And that I couldn't emotionally handle "fail". I didn't know if I had the strength to check my results, but it was one of the easiest things I had to do.

Wrapping Up

So that's my story, it actually felt good to write it. And I hope you come across this regardless of where you are in your journey, and I hope this helps you. Few things I want to mention.

Kaplan. Would I suggest it? I honestly don't know. If you have it already, just stick with it. Don't be deterred from all the negative comments. The questions WILL prepare you for NCLEX, I promise. But expect to put up with frustration. As I said, some rationales have issues. But also some questions are duplicates, so it might slightly skew results.

I also used PDA (didn't finish it) and a little bit of Alternate Format Questions by Lippincott (barely used it). Despite not finishing them, I would still suggest them. Use them for how much you need them. Before PDA I was terrible at priority and delegation questions but this helped make it click. Ironically, I didn't get many of those questions on NCLEX. Instead, I got more ethical/legal and I was not prepared for those. Regarding the Alternate Format book, I got it as a precaution but after doing the Kaplan test I knew I was fine. Also, Kaplan was the only source where I wrote down questions.

Also, after the test I would say do what YOU feel is right. Everyone says don't think about it, don't talk about it, and don't read about it. I 100% disagree. I spent the following day googling it like crazy, and it somewhat gave me peace of mind. Also it passed the time. Do whatever it is that works for you, but understand that people around you can only take so much.

Do your homework too! SATA does NOT mean it's above passing! SATA does NOT mean it's above passing! SATA does NOT mean it's above passing! Sorry, had to emphasize that. I saw so many posts about that on this site. Even the NCSBN confirms this. I would also suggest watching the videos about CAT. Even if you know how CAT works, watch them. They provide info you may not know, such as how the computer starts with a broader difficulty of questions, then narrows the range until it locks on.

I never really reviewed my notebook of questions. Again, writing them down helped me process the information. Also it was nice to have something to reference where I could pull questions up right away. For instance, if I thought "Wait! But that said..." then I could easily look it up.

My last thing is study in the way that works for you. If everyone is doing X but you learn better with Y, do Y! You aren't going into this blind, doing questions allows you to mark tangible progress. If you know what most of the things mean, or get questions wrong and go "I was going to pick that one!" you probably don't have a knowledge deficit.

Scores

QT1: 56
QT2: 53
QT3: 58
Practice Test: 47

QT4: 63
QT5: 61
QT6: 65
QT7: 59
Readiness Test: 69

Who Do You See First: 83

Alternate Format: 48

Sample 1: 66
Sample 2: 56

QB1-11: 55-60
QB12: 47
QB13-16: 61-68

And I did a QB today just because I can: 72% (not bad after not studying for a month!)

I wish you the best of luck, and when everyone around you says "you'll do fine", just remember that they're saying it for a reason. They see what you don't see. While you and I might see putting in numerous hours a day to study as the norm, it's far from normal. And because it's such a fundamental part of life now, that's why people believe in you. You gave them a reason to.