Weirdest test taker EVER on NLEX perhaps?

[RebeccaJeanRN]

My friend took NCLEX the other day. It ended at 75 questions, so I congratulated her because I thought it was a very positive sign (statistically, you have a much better chance of passing with 75 questions than failing). She still doesn't know her results yet, but here was her unique feedback and why she is stressing: she went home and checked some of her exam questions out (from the topics she remembered) and she confirmed that she blanked out (nerves?) and got lots of the simpler questions wrong, but some much harder ones right. I'm wondering- anybody ever pass like that with 75 questions? Knowing that you got lots of 'easy' ones wrong but getting some more difficult ones right? If I know her, I'm sure she's telling it like it is! That she got many easy ones wrong and hard ones right...but it flies in the face of how the CAT programming is supposed to work (if you get the easy ones wrong, you are supposed to get more 'easy' ones- not a good sign, but still isn't that the way its supposed to work???). BTW: she can't remember whether the last question she got was a hard one or easy one...

[EricJRN, MSN, RN]

The problem here is that this whole business of easy vs hard is very subjective. I'm a NICU nurse and I had an interest in it long before graduating, so peds stuff seemed to stick better with me. There are other areas that my classmates might have found easy, but I thought was difficult.

Also, when anyone mentions going home and looking up answers, it's good to bring up two important points:

- Psychology tells us that you're more likely to remember the questions that stumped you and forget many of the ones that you breezed right through.

- The NCLEX is set up so that both passers and failers tend to only get 50% right. That kind of percentage would rattle anyone.

Best of luck to your friend on her results!

[DutchgirlRN, ASN, RN]

she can't remember whether the last question she got was a hard one or easy one...

Makes no difference and you can't guess by the last question. You do your best and then wait for the results.