Passed 2nd time 265 questions!

[ORnurse20]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share my story because I really think it can help some people that are stressing and going through a hard time. (Sorry if it’s long)

First exam:
I graduated nursing school in December 2019. I took a week break and then buckled down on the studying. I used Saunders (bad idea) and Uworld. I did one of the Uworld exams and it said I was low chance of passing. I also had Kaplan from my school, did one of their CAT exams and got borderline passing with 265 questions. Now I had a deadline with the hospital I was working with and wanted to have enough time to take the exam twice. So I booked my exam. Trying to stay positive because I heard many stories how so many people go in unprepared and still pass!
The day of the exam I was extremely nervous and took the exam fairly quick. I thought I was doing well and my exam shut off at 150. I knew I was 50/50 either I passed or I completely bombed it. When I got home I did the VUE trick and got the bad pop-up. I was extremely gutted. Cried for days and really had to pick myself back up to retake this exam.
SECOND TIME:
This time I knew I could not fail. I bought hurst, also found in a flash drive of mine the mark Klimek audios. What I would do was watch a burst video then do uworld questions and I noticed my scores were way higher, I was actually understanding the material. I tried not to overwhelm myself daily and tried to really understand the rationals. I left the mark audios till the last week and went over my notes a few times. I did another Kaplan CAT and it shut off at 150 ironically and said I was going to pass. I also did one of the hurst ones but honestly I didn’t like their questions that much, they were confusing to me.
I went to a site to take the exam pretty far from my house, woke up at 5am and listened to all my favorite songs on the way. I tried to be as calm as possible. Taking the exam, I was like okay where is everything I learned in hurst and Klimek?? I got nothing that I knew and started to worry that I was going to fail once again, the only thing keeping my head up was I got a lot of SATA first half of exam like 3 or 4 back to back and THEN towards the end it was straight multiple choice with 2 or 3 drag and drop. I passed 75 and was like okay that’s fine then I passed 150 and was like, okay good not like last time. Honestly my exam was hard things I’ve never even heard of. I just tried to take my time and took breaks when I needed too. Eventually I was the last person in that testing center which is funny cause in nursing school I was one of the first few people out of an exam.
When I reached 265 I was like alright it can go either way just hope it goes in my way! Next morning I checked and found out that I passed! I honestly was so shocked and could not believe I passed this exam.
My word of advice is take your time, stay in your own lane, don’t worry about other people passing (I know social media is hard to avoid) and stay positive! Many people pass this exam so you can too!

[magnoliablush, BSN, RN]

Happy to see you passed! The NCLEX is a beast that is so random! Congratulations, Nurse!