Passed in 75 questions...

Published

OK. So, I have never posted on here but I have been creeping and peeping on this site for most of my time in nursing school and it has been so helpful to read other people going thru the same stuff as me and to read people's tips and advice on the big, bad NCLEX. So, I figured it was only fair that I share my experience as it may be helpful to someone else.

I graduated from school in May and didn't want to rush into the exam so I signed up to take it mid-August. I took some time off for vacation and didn't start really studying until about the 2nd week of July. Here are my main resources:

1.) Kaplan Nursing Strategies & Review 2012-2013

2.) LaCharity's Prioritization, Delegation & Assessment

3.) The study guide which is on this site but which is NOT an official Allnurses study guide or endorsed by them in any shape or form.

I work several days a week in a relaxed office setting which was extremely helpful. I would search for online NCLEX questions and found a great one with free sample Kaplan ones which I would do at my desk and then read the answers and rationale (I think I searched "free Kaplan NCLEX question trainers"). I think they are free because they are a few years old but I still found them to be very relevant and helpful. Then, at lunch I would do questions from the books. I made my way thru the LaCharity first and the Kaplan second. I would do the questions and mark the ones I got wrong and I usually did 2-3 chapters a day, so between 50-80 questions a day from the books. When I got home on those days I usually didn't study much and saved that for my days off from school.

One thing I did NOT do was go crazy and do 300 questions a day. That probably works for some people and if that is you, then go for it, but for me, I would have been burnt out and not absorbed any information anyway.

I think a key to the NCLEX and NCLEX prep is to not panic and listen to your inner voice. Stay in control and don't ever panic about any of this because you will lose focus and if you hear a little voice saying "I don't want to study anymore" listen to it. Don't think that you will be "punished" because you maybe didn't study that much one or two days. The NCLEX is not some evil, dark, wizard lord who can do that, lol! I promise....I took every single weekend off pretty much. I believe that the key to studying for this is more about quality than necessarily quantity. You do have to do a decent amount of questions but if you are doing the wrong kind of questions it doesn't matter if you are doing 1000 a day. It probably won't help as much as 50 good ones.

Speaking of that, that is precisely why I am now a huge fan of both LaCharity and Kaplan. LaCharity was super-hard for me. I felt like a big dummy after every chapter and my scores went from 40% to 70% on the 18 different chapters and I would say my average was probably in the 50% range. Not a confidence booster! I did better on Kaplan and I would say my average there was in the 60%. I also was able to borrow access to a friend's Question Trainer 6 and 7. QT6 I got 59.5% and QT7 I got 70% BUT in the back of the Kaplan book I used is a 265 question practice NCLEX exam and I swear it is almost identical to QT 7 so I think that is why I scored 70%. I did the book one first and got 66%.

I did the question trainers a week before the NCLEX...QT 7 was actually the day before (I went Friday afternoon so I figured it was okay to study a bit the day before).

Anyway, I went into the test thinking that my scores were not as good as I would have liked (especially on LaCharity) but I felt good about QT 7 and I kind of went into the exam looking at it as a boxing match. If I was going to fight someone I would never show that I was intimidated and I would psych myself up that, yes, I could fight this person.

So that is how I treated the exam. I actually got one of the best night's sleep in a while the night before and I sang along to some of my favorite songs on the drive in.

I was, however, certain that I could not pass in 75 questions so when I was on question 75 I closed my eyes and said a little prayer (I did a lot of praying, lol, and even at my computer before I took it) and hit next and it shut off. I didn't know what to think. I kept telling myself that I must have failed but a little voice inside was like, "No. No, you didn't. You kicked it's butt!" But I was scared to believe that voice so I kind of didn't get excited.

I did the PVT when I got home -about an hour later- and I got the good pop up. I thought I must have done it wrong so I kept redoing it like a crazy person. I even did it where once I said I had never taken the NCLEX and the next I said I did and both times I got the same good pop up. I was able to pay (Ohio) and get my early results on Sunday and my actual license posted on Monday.

I guess my point with this post was to show people who maybe aren't getting the practice scores that they want, that they are NOT out of the game. I was an A, occasional B student before nursing school where I quickly usually got C for "continue" (hahahahaha) - my excuse is that my school is HARD and they pound you with NCLEX-style questions and their usual NCLEX pass rate is 98% (which I do think benefited me in the long run though it was 2 years of hell). I did not take an expensive review class (books were around $60 for both on Amazon) and I was not the most disciplined studier (is that even a word?) and I don't even remember all my lab values (damn you, magnesium!) but I passed in 75 questions so as long as you have confidence and study smart, you can too.

Good luck to all of you still waiting to take the exam. You can do this.

Oh, and don't let it get to you if the test people treat you like a cheater. It's not personal. The cray-cray at my place wouldn't even let me push my own chair in afterwards...no clue what he was checking for but he sort of swiveled it around before HE pushed it in, lol.

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Thank you for the encouraging words and Congrats

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thank you CONGRATS was there alot of renal content thats my week area???

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Great post! =) Thank you for sharing your insights. Congratulations!

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Congrats!:)

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Congrats :yeah:

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Congrats...I take mine on Saturday!! Eek!

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You know the exam is so varied it's hard to say what you may get because everyone does get something different. For example, I didn't have any point-and-click pictures but some of my friends did. I had 2 or 3 math questions and some people get none. I don't recall any of my questions really (and I couldn't legally share them anyway even if I did) but I can say that what I did was I paid attention to common themes in the practice questions I did. For example, I made sure to study autonomic dysreflexia because I noticed it kept cropping up across several different resources. Also, think in terms of what you are most likely to run into in the real world. Like, you probably aren't going to see a leper in Ohio but you will see a lot of diabetics so going off that theory I would make sure that I knew the renal side of DM. That kind of thing. I didn't really study content other than what is on the guide I found on this site and if I came across something I didn't know in practice questions I would Google it but other than that I figured I would just have to trust that I learned enough content in school to get me thru and it did. And I didn't study meds. At all. That's kind of maybe not responsible advice but there are so many meds out there and other than knowing your most common ones like Digoxin, Dilantin, Morphine and insulin, I found it overwhelming so I again hoped I learned enough in school to get me through.

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I graduated from school in May and didn't want to rush into the exam so I signed up to take it mid-August. I took some time off for vacation and didn't start really studying until about the 2nd week of July. Here are my main resources:

1.) Kaplan Nursing Strategies & Review 2012-2013

2.) LaCharity's Prioritization, Delegation & Assessment

3.) The study guide which is on this site but which is NOT an official Allnurses study guide or endorsed by them in any shape or form.

I was, however, certain that I could not pass in 75 questions so when I was on question 75 I closed my eyes and said a little prayer (I did a lot of praying, lol, and even at my computer before I took it) and hit next and it shut off. I didn’t know what to think. I kept telling myself that I must have failed but a little voice inside was like, “No. No, you didn’t. You kicked it’s butt!” But I was scared to believe that voice so I kind of didn’t get excited.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! You kind of calmed me down I must say!!!! haha

I am using the same resources as you did and I liked it when you said, that the NCLEX isn´t an evil, dark wizard *lol* I always try to tell myself not to panic and just stay focused. And sometimes I have days where studying just doesn´t work for some reason, so I just try to do questions then other than reviewing content. So my conscience doesn´t get that bad ;-)

Go celebrate, you did it! :w00t:

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Ur so hilarious.. Yay!!! Thank you for sharing.. Congratulations.. Yay!!! I wish il pass too..

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