Struggling Kaplan Test Please Help

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Hi everyone,

I'm in my first semester of nursing, I have A- to B+ in all of my classes and doing well in clinical. However, today I took the Kaplan Integrated Test for Funds and Health Assesment which is 10% of our grade for both classes. I honestly did not study for it because I did not know what to expect. I ended up getting a 52 and 50 scoring in the 8th and 4th percentile.

I cried my eyes out. I feel terrible about myself and questioning if I'm wasting my time and money in nursing. I love nursing and have a passion for it. How similar are the Kaplan questions to NCLEX? If anyone has tips on what I can do to better on the tests next semester please let me know.

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Specializes in Medical and general practice now LTC.

Moved to the General Student discussion forum

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Kaplans are hard. Do you know how to answer questions using Maslow, assessment vs. implementation and safety? Kaplan is big on that so if not be sure to read up on it. (I think Kaplan calls it the decision tree)

Search the remediation by topic and study those. Does your school give you a topic list?

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Specializes in SRNA.

I agree with the above. Kaplan integrated/focused exams are hard and I've given up on studying for them. I just rely on the information my school's faculty give to us to help guide my answering strategies.

Don't let it bum you out. Now that you know what to expect, remediate, take practice Kaplan (focused) and remediate for about 1 minute per question. Some tricks that can help (but is not gaurantee) is; Do ABCs (Airway, Breathing, Circulation), if the answer has "assessment" then it's most likely the answer, if it has "nursing intervention", select the answer that is APPROPRIATE for the question, NEVER "get another nurse to do" or pawn off the patient to another provider, never administer something without a provider's orders, and if the options allows for "patient safety" then that will most likely be the BEST answer. Always ask OPEN-ENDED questions (tell me more about..., what are your concerns, you seem worried, what can I do for you...).

Honestly, the more you practice focus exams, the easier it gets. My first Kaplan landed me a 28 percentile, but as I do more focus exams and spend time doing remediations, I've consistently scored in the 60s-70s percentage wise (70-97th percentile).

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