School's hidden agenda, "NCLEX pass rate: Weed out students who will not pass"

JeanettePNP, MSN, RN, NP · Feb 5, 2006

I agree with the other posters. Not making it through nursing school doesn't reflect on you as a person. You can still live your life and do lots of wonderful things even if you don't become a nurse. There are many other professions open to you. Even with nursing school being tough you have so many posters here who complain about how inadequate and unprepared they feel when they actually start work. And this is after being selected out of hundreds of applicants and making it through nursing school. What if nursing school was easy? How unprepared and inadquate would those nurses feel?

caroladybelle, BSN, RN · Feb 6, 2006

It is not fair in doing this..In my school, if you miss a day of lecture, you will struggle to pass the whole semester since you are down a lot of points and the lecture covered the exam...And they present too much information to know at one time..And they give these questions to you from out of the blue in the multiple choice test..It is not fair..In regular college, like general education, classes will not be like nursing school in terms of filtering you out!

And what do you think that professional nursing is????? You will be bombarded with large amounts of information, too much to know at one time, and you get questions thrown at you from "out of the blue". And no, it is not like a regular job.

Nursing school (like medical school) is hard because the profession is hard.

NeoNurseTX, RN · Feb 6, 2006

They don't tell us this, but they use HESI to determine if we can sit for the NCLEX *and* graduate.. No wonder we have such high NCLEX scores - not everyone gets to take it!

ZASHAGALKA, RN · Feb 6, 2006

They don't tell us this, but they use HESI to determine if we can sit for the NCLEX *and* graduate.. No wonder we have such high NCLEX scores - not everyone gets to take it!

I never took HESI.

The school I went to normally accepted ~110 and grad about 85.

In the 2 yrs before I grad in '93, they had a 100% pass rate. In the year I grad, 1 person (not me) failed the NCLEX on first try. 1 failure out of about 250 grads is not a bad pass rate.

But they had a novel program: an integrated program. Every sem of clinicals, you had a rotation through all the depts, and the next sem, you built on those rotations. Instead of doing each rotation in turn, we did each rotation each sem.

It was a tough program. But if nothing else, I was prepared to pass NCLEX when I grad.

BTW - Howard Community College in Columbia, MD is where I got my ADN-RN.

~faith,

Timothy.

1Tulip · Feb 6, 2006

I've just heard that the N-CLEX pass-rate at the University program here (one to which I'm applying for a faculty position) is only 60%!!! Not good. They're obviously doing something badly.

But this is the flip-side of the OP's issue. Isn't it horribly unfair to take the time and money of these students when the school is letting down 40% of the class and setting them up for failure?

Future_Nurse_Natalie · Feb 6, 2006

And in that case, everyone should do some research before applying to NS. My school has 100% BSN passing rate and 98% ADN rate. I knew this going in and I had a choice of 5 different schools. NONE of them compare to Mercy College by far. I had no intention of applying to a school with less than 85%.

SNLiz · Feb 7, 2006

Of course they "weed out". Not everyone who wants to be a nurse can be. I'm sorry for those who desire it and can not obtain it, but thats the truth of the matter. Some just can not do the critical thinking, the application of the knowledge base, and elimination of whats wrong vs. whats right. (definently when all four answers seem right) I am in my 3rd semester of a 4 semester program-we started with 40. We are down to 14, and Im not sure we are done losing them yet. Our NCLEX pass rate is 100%. Why should the schools send out students who arent going to pass anyway? That is just a waste of time and money, as far as I am concerned. They dont make these exams super hard for no reason-NCLEX is super hard. Thats what a nursing program is about, IMO-passing NCLEX. You learn to be a nurse on your first job.

ltmja · Sep 28, 2007

God I wish taking the NCLEX was like taking a walk in the park. Nursing school is tough; we had 35 people who didn't make it all the way through. 18 of those were people didn't make it through our med-surg 2 class!!!! I failed the NCLEX and am retaking it again next week. I figured that as hard as my nursing school was I would have passed it the first time but I will this next time!!!! good luck to all those who are still in nursing school or still need to take the boards still!:)

texasnurse08 · Sep 28, 2007

imo anyone who wants to be a nurse can be!! some may just have to take an alternative route or just a longer one. if they want it bad enough they will continue to try. in the words of my dean, "out of failure comes motivation." although, i do agree that schools only look out for themselves. just b/c a student has such a hard time in school does not mean they will fail the nclex nor does it mean they will be a bad nurse. if the student is failing clinical then i would say they may be a bad nurse. they may just need extra time to understand and may be good at self teaching. plus they could sign up for nclex review programs to help them. as for the bad nurse theory, i believe that some students who don't do well on exams may have some kind of test anxiety. in clinical they do well but when it comes to tests they just freeze up.

GeauxNursing · Sep 28, 2007

The reason why nursing school is tuff because the directors want the students to pass NCLEX..They make the course work hard so that they will know only bright students will pass NCLEX...If the school gets under a 75% pass rate on NCLEX, the school will be put on probation...
I over heard this while the directer was talking to an instructor..

well duh, why would we want ppl who aren't "bright" becoming a nurse, anyway? it makes sense. the courses are hard, the NCLEX is hard, nursing is hard. think about it.

MB37 · Sep 28, 2007

My school puts it a little differently - we take a HESI in each of our core classes that's worth 20-40% of our grade, so if you do badly you probably won't pass the class. Rationale: if you are unable to learn the material, isn't it better to fail out after,say, two semesters than to waste your time and money completing the program and then fail the NCLEX repeatedly? We also must pass the exit HESI to graduate. They also prepare us though - I'm taking an elective NCLEX strategies course this semester (it's one credit, pass/fail), and I'll take the second half next semester. They also require us to take a Kaplan review course in our last semester. Only one person out of the last class didn't pass on the first try.

caliotter3 · Sep 28, 2007

One of the local nursing schools where I used to live had a long-standing reputation for weeding out more than 50% of each class and preserved it's near perfect pass rate for years on end. This reputation was so well-known, that my dad told me about it and he lived in a different part of the state. I chose not to go to this program because I did not want to go to a school where the deck was appararently stacked against me. Nursing school is hard enough as it is without the added pressure of instructors gunning for people to fail out. BTW, I notice on the state website it shows that this school has a pass rate "way down there". I wonder what happened in the ensuing years? Maybe a discrimination lawsuit or two? Who knows? But they certainly don't have a perfect pass rate anymore. Wonder if they still kick out more than half of each class.