Testing Tuesday, qbank scores dropping

etpstudent · Oct 24, 2016

A similar thing happened to me although my scores were mostly in the high fifties/low sixties then they dipped into the low 50s/40s in the few days before my test. I passed with 75 questions. Good luck!

yukyville · Oct 26, 2016

How did it go!!! Did you try the trick?

Hope you did great

spaghetina · Oct 31, 2016

I ended up frantically trying to postpone my test, only to realize that it was less than 24 hours out, and I could no longer reschedule. Instead, I leisurely took a few more short practice tests the night before the test from the UWorld Qbank, just to see whether I'd really, truly fried my brain or not. I ended up scoring a couple 60s, then a 70%, then a 90%, at which point I quit because I didn't want to shake my confidence any more. I put on the final Mark Klimek lecture to listen to while I laid in bed, and went to sleep relatively relaxed.

The next morning, I woke up early, had a huge breakfast in preparation for having to sit in the test center for 6 hours, leisurely got ready, packed some snacks and water for my breaks, and then drove to the testing center. I arrived about an hour early, and the waiting area was empty, except for a woman who called me over to complete my registration. She mentioned something about it being great that I was so early, and then asked if I wanted to start the test early too. I had no idea that was even an option, but What the heck?, I figured. I went through all the registration rigmarole, put my hair clip away (because they don't allow them anymore - you have to use a rubber band, which they supplied), and was called into the back room.

I turned my pockets inside out, did the hokey pokey, and turned myself around, was handed a white board and the guy pointed towards computer #23. I must've made a noise because he was like, "Is that a bad number for you?" And so I said 'yes' - yes, #23 is the unluckiest number of all numbers for me. It worked for Jordan, but it is no friend of mine. So he asked if I wanted to switch to the machine in the corner, and I wanted to hug him because, YES, I did want to switch. So, I sat down, settled in, and marveled at the fact that my heart was beating so hard and so fast that I could hear my blood pumping the second I squished my earplugs in. I flew through the tutorial, wondering halfway through if at some point there had been mention of being able to skip it altogether. I didn't want anything to go wrong, so I finished the whole thing, just in case.

And then the test started. The first one was multiple choice. Great. And then the next was SATA. And then another SATA. And ANOTHER SATA. Obviously, this test wants to kill me, I thought to myself, heart still pounding. But as they kept coming, I found myself becoming increasingly comfortable. UWorld's testing format had really prepared me well for everything I was looking at, and I felt strangely okay. I wrote a tick mark for every SATA I was given, and by question 19, I'd had 10 SATAs. Whole strings of them would show up, and at one point I actually laughed out loud because it felt ridiculous. At around question 60, I noticed that I started getting a lot of priority and delegation questions. It felt like a good sign, but I didn't want to jinx myself, so I continued to answer carefully. As soon as I submitted my 75th answer, my screen went blank, and my eyes immediately welled up with tears. Somehow I managed to finish the exit survey through the blurred vision, grabbed my white board and pen, and was halfway out of my chair to get up and leave - totally flustered - before remembering that I was supposed to raise my hand to be let out. I don't think I would've remembered, honestly, except that there was a Pearson employee standing right behind me seating someone else, which snapped me back into reality.

I drove home intermittently bawling my eyes out. It wasn't even that I felt bad about the test - I didn't, I actually felt okay about it - but I was terrified because I felt okay about it, and I was also totally overcome with emotion. I'm one of those irritating people who almost never walks out of a test feeling like it went well. And then I get a passing grade, and all is well. On the few occasions where I've felt like I did well, I've bombed (my version of bombing, okay?) them. So the feelings I had were confusing. I couldn't believe I'd just taken the NCLEX. Quite possibly the single most important test of my life.

I got home and resisted doing the Pearson Vue trick. I didn't want to give myself false hope, or send myself into a tailspin over the 'bad' pop-up, knowing that it wouldn't be 100% accurate. But of course, an hour ticked by, and then another hour, and sitting on my hands wasn't working at all, and so I caved and did it. "Our records indicate that you have recently scheduled this exam. Another registration cannot be made at this time."Yesssssssss, good pop-up!! But then I started googling all of the people who'd gotten the good pop-up who still failed. So I tried again. And again. On and on, throughout the night, and into the next day, and the pop-up never changed. Meanwhile, I kept checking for my name on the nursing board's website.

Finally, 36 hours after I took my test, I logged into the Breeze website, searched my name, and saw that there were now 2 pages of results, instead of the 1 page that I'd been seeing. I clicked over to 'page 2', and immediately began sobbing because there, on that page, was my name. I passed!!

I pretty much cried my eyes out (happy tears) for the next hour, before I was exhausted and took myself to bed.

75 questions and 75 minutes is all it took to change my life.

TL;DR: I passed!

Testing Tuesday, qbank scores dropping

What to do, what to do?