Test taking strategies - nursing school is completely different!

[ebinbrooklyn]

I'm in an ABSN program and not getting the sort of scores on my tests that I should be - which is incredibly frustrating because I'm at school from 9 am - 11 pm 5-6 days a week (pathophysiology might kill me - and I could tell you the mechanisms of exactly how it would go down because I am studying THAT MUCH!). I keep messing up and getting answers wrong on things I know and my grades are not reflecting how incredibly hard I am working, which means I'm working harder, not smarter​. These tests just feel different than the ones I dealt with in my undergrad days - and being on an accelerated track certainly isn't helping the matter. Does anyone have any recommendations for test taking strategies? A lot of my tests are NCLEX prep style or worded in a confusing manner, which is throwing me for a loop. Thank you in advance!

edit: Oops, I realized this is not in the right thread but I'm not sure how to move it. Sorry everyone!

[MichiganRN13]

Check out Kaplan nursing and the programs they offer if your not familiar with it. I think I know the type of questions you are talking about and Kaplan could be a big help. My best advice is (I'm not saying you don't already do this) to first determine what exactly the question is asking and reword it so it makes sense to you. Then you need to decide if you need further assessment or to implement something. If there isn't enough assessment info in the question and the assessment in the answer is reasonable then 95% of the time it will be an assessment answer. Plus always remember Maslow hierarchy - physical before psychosocial. Those are just a few things that helped me to score better on NCLEX style questions. Hope that helps, but you should definitely check out the Kaplan site or something similar to get some other ideas. Good luck.