hey guys! I just found out that I passed my nclex! in 75 questions. Before taking my exam I was a complete mess! heard a lot of bad BAD stories about nclex, and how HARD it wasss etc. well let me just tell my own side of story about nclex. (gonna be a long post)
I used uworld (1month subscription like $60), hurst(online review $300?), kaplan qbank(1month subscription $60??), also I had my saunders 5th edition book
uworld: well well well...uworld is like the MEGA POPULAR NCLEX Q BANK according to a lot of people. Uworld likes to give "ridiculous" unnecessary hard questions, that obviously NCLEX will not even bother to ask you. overall score I think it was 50% or less cant recall just made sure to write down all of the rationales that I didnt know. I made a whole notebook about rationales from hurst, uworld, kaplan and reviewed them every other day
hurst: purchased the online review because I was out of school for 2 years, and I needed a refresh call. it helped but hurst doesn't cover a lot of important topics. like in the lecture of respiratory, they emphasize about chest tubes but theres nothing about the ICS or SABA at all in the lectures (maybe in the fifth day material, I DID NOT go over the pharm part it's a lot of content... but funny thing is that I didn't get question about saba or ics hhaha but I believe that it is a must "know" content). (i also felt that the videos from hurst were from the early 2000 or late 90's judging by their clothes and style I don't know how often they actualize their content but anyhow~ the accent is pretty heavy but understandable some videos are funny as hell some are not... scores out of 125... 61/67/86/76/71, the first and second exam I just clicked haha....
kaplan qbank: ok I purchased this qbank after going thru uworld and for real I was about to make a huge rant... someone that I know passed nclex studying just kaplan qbank for 3 weeks, she didn't use any other resources so I thought that it will help. well those 60 bucks were a total waste of money and time!! how I wished I didn't buy that qbank the rationales were TERRIBLE. I couldn't believe how awful they were with the rationales and QUESTIONS.. they like to put a lot of weird long questions very unnecesary.....
saunders 5th edition I barely went thru the book I have this huge book and reviewed some topics that I couldn't understand but didn't bother to read the whole book. the questions that saunders offer in the book are way too easy (know some people that passed nclex just by reading the entire book.........)
downloaded some free APPS in my phone for the go, it was okay....
As for my nclex I was shaking before the exam, ive always had test anxiety.. my exam was at 8am, I woke up like 3am thinking about the test I wanted to throw up, horrible as hell but I managed to eat a banana and granola bar before the exam cause I was thinking on spending the whole day in the test center.
started my exam,, first question was okay, easy in fact, second question was okay.... after like 10 questions I was like WHAT IN THE WORLD is going on... the questions were EASY nothing like uworld kaplan hurst...... BUT the answers were terrible similar!!!! so I was struggling with the easy questions but with difficult answers, pretty vague so I was guessing pretty much in every question. I was able to encounter like 2-3 questions similar from uworld and other 2-3 questions related to the hurst content. so I i'll give some credit to hurst and uworld.
barely had SATA no more than 10..... JUST ONE SINGLE DELEGATION QUESTION! ONE! OH MAY GOOODNESS!! the rest of the test was a mix of adult, psych, ped, MATERNITY (questions like station, effacement things like that! horrible I know), 7-8 questions of infection control, had like 3-4 graphic questions!!, 3-4 put in order questions, no EKG, no med calculation.
After my exam shut off at 75 questions I was dammed sure I failed the exam. didn't think that much for the next 48 hours, didn't do the PVT trick....
found out today after paying for the quick results that I passed, best feeling in the whole world... studied for like 3 months or so, did a lot of questions, wanted to make sure to pass this exam the first time. (foreign nurse here!) spent $1500 to go to USA to take my exam, hotel fee, transportation, flight etc....spent money on the resources (hurst,kaplan,uworld,saunders,etc), exam fee and a lot more so like in total I spent like a little more than $2500 dollars just to be able to have my license haha..
so conclusion:
DONT stress about the exam is not gonna be RIDICULOUSLY HARD, LIKE KAPLAN "ehem". NCLEX RN like to focus on HOW SAFE YOU ARE GOING TO BE AS A NURSE, just testing that you can be a safe nurse~~ after reading a lot of POST NCLEX EXAM everyone has had questions about infection control, delegation priority etc, so spend some time studying those type of questions.
credit to uworld and hurst. good resources
Any questions? feel free to ask
RN_2016
17 Posts
Some people average 50% and passed. Key is you have to really pay attention on rationales for each question.