I passed NCLEX in 75 questions and in 42 minutes. I'm posting this not to brag, but rather to let people know that taking the exam doesn't have to be some huge stressful life event.
I was nervous before taking NCLEX, mostly because of reading the forum posts on this site and letting other people stress me out. I just wanted to post my experience and, hopefully, make some people feel better going into the exam.
Background:
I've always done pretty well in school, my BSN was a second degree, I did an ABSN program in 18 months, and my nursing gpa was over 3.8. I've always been good at taking tests.
What I did to study:
Took 80% of kaplan's qbank questions and the first 5 q trainers (my average was around 74%). My school also made me take the kaplan class, but I didn't pay attention the whole time because we had just graduated the week prior and I was tired of focusing. I never really used their decision tree except when it came to delegation or acuity questions. I also reviewed precautions ALOT. I made sure i generally understood all meds, but decided not to waste time on that. In all, I spent 6 days, full focus, doing questions and then remediating them. Looking back, I think I studied too much.
So....If you are normally a person who does well in school and on tests, don't let this forum get to you. My advice is this: do the practice questions to get familiar with the types of questions and study precautions. Skip too many med details, focus on reason for med and pt teaching if you study it at all. Then relax and stop reading these forums. Don't let others get into your head.
You will probably do fine. I studied and worried too much about it. NCLEX was much easier than Kaplan. I couldn't even tell which questions were the "hard ones."
