Hello, I just wanted to repay the favor to everyone who has posted on this site with tips and encouragement for beating this exam and want to share my experience with those who will be taking it soon.
A bit of a background on me: I graduated from nursing school in 2012- that's about 2 and a half years ago! I was an average student- did okay on exams but clinicals is where I thrive in. I am NOT a good test taker so the NCLEX was a big challenge for me. I was only 22 when I graduated so I was pretty drained after school- decided to take a looong break before my 1st attempt. Many people suggest you take the exam right after graduating but I waited for about 6 months. I highly suggest you take it early but like me you can definitely do it if you wait, it'll just be a bit harder. Well as figured I totally bombed it, was not prepared at all. I only prepped by doing chapter questions from Saunders
Second attempt:
Life happened in the meantime leaving me with little time to study. Finally I made it my 2014 resolution to pass the NCLEX. My second attempt I focused on reviewing content to refresh my memory. I used the Saunders Comp Review and Exam Cram. I also downloaded the Review Guide found on here and the Kaplan RN course book to my iPad. I re-took the test in April 2014 and failed. I focused too much on content and ran out of time to do practice questions. I found my weak point of SATA questions and priority questions.
Third times the charm!
With a game plan I gave myself 2 months to study for my third attempt. The first month was a refresher and the second month was crunchtime- I studied for about 5 hours non stop everyday while working non the less. I focused on doing about 100 questions a day. I purchased La Charity, Saunders Q&A Review-highly recommended and the Kaplan Strategies book. I rewrote the questions with rationales of the questions I got wrong after every section. A few days before the exam, I typed everything out and made my own study guide from all my notes. From there I only read those notes. i can finally say that I am a BSN-RN!! Passed the test with 77 questions.
If I can pass this test, you definitely can too. I self studied really disciplined myself- I hope this gives inspiration to those who are re-taking the NCLEX!
