passed nclex the second time

Students NCLEX

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Just wanted to share my experience and hopefully inspire others to keep going! The first go round, I had a big head and didnt think that I, an honors student with a great gpa who had passed the "more difficult" hesi exam on the first try, needed to study. Well 3 hours, 265 questioms, and a full onnmental breakdown later, I realized I was wrong.i was totally unprepared for it. It had been a few months since I graduated, and my biggest problem was unfamiliarity with the nclex question format. When I hit 75 questions and my exam didnt shut off, I was shocked. I started to panic and wound up just clicking answers to get through the test. I was so embarassed, ashamed, and ****** that I had failed.

My second go round, I walked in and 77 questions later I walked out feeling so confident. The pearson vue trick no longer worked at this point, and I wasnt risking my 200 dollars, so I waited 2 days to get my quick results which confirmed that I had passed. (Side note: I didnt know the PVT was no longer reliable so when I atte, pted it and got the cc page my heart sunk..... thankfully I found out they had fixed/altered the glitch!)

Anyways, here are some suggestions that helped me pass the second time!

- take the test at 8 am. Waiting around all day is horrible for anxiety in even the most confident test takers

- focus on questions, not content. Practice questions got me used to the style of nclex questions, and content based questions were few and far between. I seriously recommend prioritization, delegation, and assaignment by lacharity. It is the only thing I paid for (no kaplan or hurst reviews, just free online questions and a saunders book with questions I had from school)

- dont believe a lot of the myths! Ihad less than 10 SATA questions and one alterante format.... thats it! The rest were multiple choice. Theres rumors that the more sata/medication questions you get the better you are doing, but this isnt always the case! I had TONS of those the first time I took the test and failed, and hardly any when I passed.

Thank you so much for inspiring those of us who have failed the NCLEX on the first attempt!

cp1024

80 Posts

Just out of curiosity....what was your HESI exit exam score? I was feeling pretty good about mine (945) and was hoping that it would actually give me a good indication that I was going to be OK for the test.

I still plan to study, and do practice questions ect, but I don't want it to give me a false since of security either.

Congratulations RN!

taytot

2 Posts

I got either 925 or 935 on HESI, and that was the main reason I didnt study. But seriously after doing tons of practice questions, and maybe because I already knew what to expect the second time lol, I walked out of the exam feeling so confident! Just get used to the format and you will do great!

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