The NCLEX is a complete conundrum to me

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This is test just boggles my mind....I don't get it at all. I took the NCLEX back in February and used Kaplan to its fullest capacity. Walked in to the testing center feeling super confident. I was positive that I'd be shut off at 75 questions and was fairly sure of my answers up till that point. But it didn't shut down at 75. Well 6 hours and 265 questions later, I felt like I had been taken out to a back alley and beaten to the point of death. Over 50% of my test was SATA, about 20 infection control questions, zero med calculation question and an insane number of OB questions. I gave up on counting the number of questions that began with, "Your patient is at ## weeks gestation.......". 4 weeks later, I found out I failed.

I was a straight A student all throughout school, graduated with high honors, and even tutored 1st semester students. I really just didn't understand where I went wrong with this test. It was the absolute worst feeling and I felt completely defeated, especially when all my classmates around me were passing left and right.

So after an extended pity party, I got back on the band wagon in October. I switched to UWORLD, LaCharity and a moderate amount of Saunders. I did the entire UWORLD bank twice (and had a 70% pass rate with a 92 percentile ranking the first time around). I typed up about 120 pages of notes while completing UWORLD, and studied those notes backwards and forwards. I studied pretty much 8-10 hours a day, 7 days a week.

So I just retook my test today...and again, I am completely baffled. This experience was completely different. And the difference was - the test shut off at 75 questions AND the questions seemed REALLY difficult....questions on topics that I never saw on UWORLD, nor Kaplan. Questions where I was like, "uhhhhh, I never heard of this before in my life"...drugs that might well have just have been written in Chinese. And the WORST kind of drug questions too. The ones with no context....just "Your patient is given some random drug, what should you watch out for".

In fact, I think there was only like 3 questions that I could answer in complete confidence and whose answers I could pull from my memory of those 120 pages of notes.....and the rest were educated guesses. Never even got a chance to use the countless number of mnemonics and memory tricks that I made up...because, yeah absolutely none of it was on my test. I was ready to go to town on my little whiteboard with all those graphs, charts and tables that I memorized. But nope, didn't need any of those either. I had about 40 SATA, 1 ECG, 1 drag and drop, 6 meds, and zero OB and zero calculation questions.

Then there were other questions that just seemed insanely specific. Questions where I would be thinking...."yeah, I guess I WOULD HAVE known that answer IF I had memorized that one single sentence from the Saunders book on page 1024 in the 16th line of the 18th paragraph!!".

I basically left feeling like I studied for a completely different test. I guess that I really just don't understand how to study for this thing. People say all the time that they leave feeling like they failed...but then passed. Really...that reflects a test design that I cannot wrap my head around. Licenses are handed out left and right to test takers that consistently claim they felt they had "guessed" on a large number of questions. Again, it's just such an odd design and appears flawed on the surface. Is this simply luck that they passed...or some element of Bloom's taxonomy at work that is completely beyond my comprehension.

So anyways....kinda frustrated and just had to vent, lol :) I'm in CA, so it could actually take weeks to find out my results unfortunately. Thanks for reading this far...and wish me luck!! If I pass, I will be completely dumbfounded. :nailbiting:

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do the pvt í ½í¸

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I was going to finally break down and do that today...but no need....just found out I passed!! :woot::laugh:

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congrats Tiktokk!!!

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Hi TikTokk, would it be okay if I ask for your notes? I'm doing UWORLD too. Thank you! [email protected] is my email.

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Congrats!! Do you feel like uworld helped?

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Congratulations. I failed last month I'm praying that I pass next time.

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Hi tiktokk, can I have your notes? Thanks in advance. [email protected]

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

The underlying psychometrics involved in NCLEX & other licensure exams is actually pretty fascinating. The software algorithms used in item response theory are pretty convoluted. Basically, each item has an attached value... based on the odds of a new grad being able to answer that question correctly. Those odds are calculated from actual testing data (analyzing each item in relation to the final test result) .... and it is continually refined.

Ultimately, I guess that a "perfect" test would consist of one item - because there would be sufficient evidence that anyone who answered correctly would be able to safely practice nursing - LOL.

CONGRATULATIONS!!! This is actually the primary reason we all make sure to renew our licenses on time... so we never have to to take NCLEX again.

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