Passed NCLEX in 60. My experiences (from CA & military veteran expedite) during COVID

[K'smum, ADN, RN]

Hello everyone, I am a recent RN grad in CA and a military vet. As all of you know, due to the pandemic everything was so backed up. I applied May 12 and graduated May 20. My school sent in my transcripts within the first two weeks of June. I read online that if you are a vet or spouse of a vet, your application can be expedited. However, no where online did it say how fast it would be compared to other applications. 5 weeks after I submitted my application, I emailed the BRN to ask if they were still in fact expediting vets and the answer was, “yes, we put the application on top of the pile.” I waited 8 weeks (the minimum amount stated on the BRN website) from when I submitted and decided to call to ask again. I spent 1hr and 20 minutes on hold for them to tell me they give their evaluators 4 weeks from the receipt of transcripts to approve the application. I told them it had been close to 4 weeks and I am guessing that sent a flag to the evaluator and two days later I received my ATT. I am not sure how fast my application was compared to others since many people who applied after me had received their ATT. However, I was the first of my class as most of them received theirs two days later.

So now about the NCLEX. I took my test at 0800, I chose early in the morning because I did not want to stress the whole day leading up to the test. I was too afraid to drink coffee that morning because I did not want to be too jittery and rush through the test. I was the first person in the room and I was so nervous. I sat down and said a quick prayer. Once the test started, I kept telling myself to slow down and take a deep breath between all the questions. One after another, I felt like s***. I was like “W T F!? is this s***?!” the whole time. I used UWorld, Kaplan (both provided by my school,) free trial of Nurse Achieve, and Mark K. I felt like I was guessing between two answers the whole time. I had about 6 SATA, 1 drag and drop, and no math. I have read many of these posts and most people agree that the more SATAs indicate a high chance of passing since they are “harder style questions.“ Well ***, I only had 6 and when I got to 60, the spinning wheel of death popped up and after a few seconds (which felt like eternity) the survey popped up. I looked at the time when I finally left the room, I was in there only for 40 minutes. I honestly did not know what to feel. I knew it was either I did alright enough to pass or I ***ED up real bad and failed. I went home and tried the PVT and to my relief, I got the good pop up!! I did it a few times just to make sure. ? I also kept checking the breeze website to see if my license would pop up. Two days after my test, my license popped up, I did not even purchase the quick results.

TL;Dr

I passed with 60 questions in 40 minutes.

I used :

-Kaplan mostly during school

-UWorld. this was the main thing I used, the whole qbank, Mixed, timed, and no tutor once I had about 900 questions left. 75 questions/day. Read all rationales. First test was borderline and second was high chance of passing

-free trial of nurse achieve for the CAT style. Had pass-passes and solid passes

-Mark K audio, I had older versions but it was still really helpful refreshing concepts.