Passed NCLEX w/ 75 Q's 1st try. My Overview for you!

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Hey everyone, I literally just found out today that I passed the NCLEX! So I would like to explain what I did to prepare for this test so that everyone reading it may pass as well! Briefly about me, I graduated nursing school in Decemeber of 2015. Since I was finally finished with the program I definitely needed some time off just to relax! Which may have prolonged things but hey, I did it lol. I started back studying using the Virtual ATI that our program provided us but did I dislike it around mid January. The program is divided into around 8-10 sections from Fundamentals-Pharm-Med Surg- Peds and on and on. I stopped the program when I finished med/surg so roughly halfway through just because it was taking me forever. The focused reviews it provides are extremely drawn out. I literally spend maybe 2 weeks studying pharm and I literally only got 1/3 through it (waste for my NCLEX got 1 pharm question but great for the long run). So I jumped ship and decided to go a different route.

Materials I used to study below with the 1 month I had left

1. Kaplan-NCLEX-RN Premier 2015-2016 w/ 2 practice tests. (Finished)

2. Saunders-Nursing school and NCLEX-RN review (Finished)

3. Lacharity 2nd Edition (not the new one) Delegate and priority (Finished half)

4. Lippincott Q&A 6000+ question NCLEX-RN review (Focused on the Maternity/Peds section only)

5. Barron's NCLEX-RN Q&A cards (mostly pharm) (yikes.. smh)

6. EXAM CRAM NCLEX-RN practice questions 1340 (did around 300 questions)

7. Uworld NCLEX RN Q-Bank. (The beez knees! Completed 600 questions with around a 68% average)

Okay let me be honest with you, I WAS NO WHERE NEAR FINISHING EVERYTHING. What would you do if you had all of these sitting on your desk? I went crazy in panic mode, I didn't really know which one to start with and my test was one month away. I actually have a book that I bought that I never even got to because it was too much information to go through in only a month. Call it overkill and trust me it was, but nonetheless I had everything at my fingertips when I needed it.

I did all studying in the order as are listed above. About 6 hours a day for a whole month no days off. Trust me it was not fun, but look at me now it was worth it.

Let me tell each and every one of you that everything listed above was good. The #1 and #2 was good for content overview but I cannot add enough emphasis to this but UWORLD was freaking amazing. It was unfortunate that a friend recommended it to me when I was only about 2 weeks shy of my exam otherwise I would have definitely finished the whole thing. I've never seen detailed rationales like the ones they give you in this program hands down but everyone is different and you have to find what works for you.

The Day before the Test:

Sorry guys, everyone said to just relax the day before, but did I? Nope. Did around 100 Uworld questions that I previously got wrong and reviewed Lab values all day.

Arriving to the test:

I arrived there about an hour early around 6:30 AM was a bit of a drive, doors open at 7:30 . I just sat in my car going over cranial nerves and more lab values. Once the doors opened I walked into the testing center which was nice and the staff was super pleasant which calmed my nerves just a little bit. So it was game time.

The Test:

I had around 8 SATA, 4 exhibits, 1 medication, 1 order, priority and random nursing content questions. The test took me around an hour and 20 minutes to get to 75. All through the test I feel that the difficulty was spread out some hard ones, then easy, then hard then easy etc.. For example at #60 there was a super easy question that I couldn't believe was given to me, I surely thought I was bombing because the questions are supposed to get harder as you go if you're getting them correct. At question 75 I was like okay I got this, let me just see that famous blue screen people tell me about and I hit next and BOOM it was over. Of course after the test, I was super anxious and depressed. I wouldn't say that the questions I got were what everyone makes it out to be. I've read posts on here (which scared the hell out of me) that omg hardest test ever, I didn't know one question etc..” This only made me more depressed after I was done because I wouldn't say that it was horrendously complex which made me think I was doing bad and getting the easier questions because I wasn't meeting the competent level questions. I narrowed almost every question down to 2 answers although some of the questions were so vague that it was hard to choose the right one. I understand every perceives this test differently but this is just how I saw mine. Now that the test is over and I saw that I passed it makes me believe that it was simply because I was prepared.

End note: If I could emphasize a couple points to those of you preparing. Get a review that goes over core content to further concrete your base of knowledge. Then study your weak areas. There are a million question banks out there, if you don't choose the one I did that's completely fine, but get those questions under your belt! Practice practice practice, and when you get a question wrong read that rationale as to why you missed it!

Anything is possible and I'm thankful to everyone who helped me along the way.

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Congrats s1992! Thank you for the very detailed overview, your hard work totally paid off!

My exam also ended at 75 questions and today I found out I passed - yippee! Like you, I used UWorld and absolutely loved them. I could not bring myself to read anymore books after graduating nursing school, and so they were actually the only study material I used. I finished all 1800 questions, redid the ones I missed, then reset the QBank and did another 800 questions. For future NCLEX-RN takers, it was not just about answering the questions... you must understand the rationals. All the questions I answered were in tutor mode for this purpose.

Anhoo, good luck in your career as a nurse, s1992!

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Thank you and congratulations to yourself as well!!!

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Congratulations thanks for the advice, I will definitely purchase UWORD and Kaplan.

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