People who have taken NCLEX, I have a question...

RN ready · May 30, 2015

That is a great question. If it helps you out any I went to a private university and had a 3.5 GPA and a pass rate of 97% for first time takers. I graduated 2 years ago and took my first attempt soon after. After taking the test 6 times I finally passed today. I did nearly everything you could think of to pass the exam. I started by taking ATI NCLEX prep course, I would not recommend this course. I then took Kaplan twice which was really good in getting stagey which was helpful at times but really only works for 5% of questions. Yes I know you can use it on every question but it only "leads" you to a answer in certain situations such as ABC's. I then bought a ton of books including NCLEX made incredibly easy, easy read but very dense. NCLEX Cram (good book) Hurst NCLEX review guide (Ok but not great) Saunders, and ATI complete set of books (a lot of information). I also purchased passpoint by Lipincot which was a great way to learn new information through taking questions. The rationals where by far the best and always had links to read more about the topic that the question asked about. Plus the greatest thing about passpoint was the levels you would achieve for answering questions. So addicting to keep answering questions to get up to level 8! After doing all of these and taking and failing my 5th time I decided to take HURST live review which was amazing. This had a lot of great content, resource documents and practice quizzes. The book they provided was very easy to read and had a lot of great content that made learning and understanding the information a lot easier. The 125q practice exams where the closest thing to mimicking NCLEX.

So, in short, yes you can go to a great school and get good grades and fail NCLEX multiple times. I never thought I would be the one that had to take NCLEX 6 times but here I am. It is possible to pass and if I had any advice it would be to take Hurst and to answer passpoint questions. I feel like if I would have started with these I would have passes much sooner. Hope all goes well and good luck! Be confident in your answer and confident that you WILL PASS NCLEX!!!!

n1wgmp · May 30, 2015

Hello,

I come from a school with a 98% pass rate for several years in a row now. I was top of my class and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a 3.873 GPA (so close to summa gaaah! :/) anyways.. I recently took my NCLEX and passed in 75 questions. We had to take HESI's throughout school, including the Exit and to me the Hesi Exit exam was much harder than the NCLEX. I still studied for the NCLEX, mostly notes from nursing school, red alerts in Saunders Comprehensive and did about 60-80 questions per day on my NCLEX 10,000 for a week. (granted, we took the Exit 2 days before graduation, and I took the NCLEX 10 days after graduation so all info was still fresh in my head)

To me, you have to know yourself. You have to know how you test. Personally, I am a slow test taker, I take my time and read the question 2x, think of the answer, then look at the answers last. There was 1 time I screwed up, it was on my first exit. I rushed through it, didn't take my usual amount of time and got a 902, which is still above passing but way below my personal standards. After that incident, I vowed to never rush through a test again, the second exit I took my time and scored a 1062. For the NCLEX I took my time, about 1hr and 40min to finish 75 questions.

KNOW yourself. KNOW how you test. You know the information, you got this!

AishaShrestha · May 31, 2015

How did your candidate performance report look? Above, near, below passing standard? What domains? Did you feel prepared in content but not in test taking strategies? Did you have trouble with idioms and the wording of the questions? And the list goes on for you to analyze and create a targeted study plan for success. The onus is on you to prepare. Failure to prepare is akin to oreparing to fail

THanx so much!!! yeah to be HOnest i have some problem with some idioms and wording...and i m too nervous at exam..though i know the contnt due to anxiety i click on wrong ans thats my weak point.

RN ready · May 31, 2015

I went to 265 twice and both times my candidate report was near passing in every category. The other times I have taken it I have taken anywhere from 110-210 questions and have usually had two categories that was above standards and then two that were below with the rest being near passing. I think the hardest part about nclex is the wording. There would be topics I would know inside and out and they still would find a way to word it in a way where two answers were correct in there own way. Then it came down to trying to figure out what NCLEX wanted. One of the best things that I learned from HUrst was to remember that it is a safety exam. That sounds really basic but knowing this it can help you come to an answer easier. My main category that was always tough was infection control. Know your hep a,b, and c's and know what you would do if you were taking care of them. Know all of your diseases and know if they are standard precaution, airborne, droplet, protective precaution ect.... There is a lot of questions on these. Come up with scenarios in your head and know that your first choice will likely not appear on the exam. I truly feel that you can be the smartest person and still not pass NCLEX your first time. They are sometimes not very well worded questions and most of the times it feels like you don't have enough information to answer the question. For me, at least, I found that the hardest part about nclex was getting out of the recall questions and getting to the delegation and priority questions.i knew that if I could get up there to those questions that I could stay there and answer a couple right in a row I could pass. In preparing for nclex I would suggest knowing your infection control, delegation, priority and pharmacology. Majority of the test will encompass these topics. Also be comfortable answering select all that apply type questions and having 3 in a row or 5 out of 10 being sata. When I first took the exam I was shocked at how many there really was and it really bothered me and took me off my game, but as I took the test more and prepared myself to have 15 to 20 percent sata it really did not bother me as much. It is a tough exam, I can say that from experience, but if you know your content and those categories I talked about you give yourself a great chance to pass. Nclex does not expect a 100 percent so know that you still can get questions wrong and pass! Once you click submit on your question just move on to the next one and don't worry about previous questions. You can do it! Hope this helps in some way. I know everyone has their own experience but this is my take on it. Good luck!