Tomorrow at 8am I am taking the NCLEX-RN in Manhattan. I graduated in June with a BSN, and have been slowly forcing myself to study more and more as the date approached.
Whether its sheer stupidity or just laziness, I forced myself not to study until July 20th. Giving myself one month to study is something I thought would be enough. I did very well in Nursing school, and I guess it gives me a small sense of comfort.
I started off by studying Saunders Comprehensive, the book has around 1200 pages, so I gave myself two weeks to do it. Every day I would do about 100 pages, including the questions at the end of each chapter, and going over it. I think overall the book has around 800 questions in the book (including the 75 question exam at the end). I averaged in the high 70s, low 80s for most of the content review.
My plan was to do the questions at the end of the chapter first, if I got at least a 75-80, I would only skim the chapter, if I got less than a 75, but above a 60, I would read it at a fast pace. If I received a 60 or less, I would take my time and go very slowly.
Out of all the chapters in the book, I only got less than a 60 on two chapters, both of them being medication chapters (opthalmic and skin I think) I had one or two 60-65 chapters. Three or four 65-70 chapters, and a bunch of 70+, a bunch of 80+ too. Even got a 100 on one or two.
Funny enough, after I visited this site (I had finished the book by then), I noticed Suzanne's first tip is also to do the questions first. I'm glad I did that, it helped me see which parts needed review.
I have to say though, the Saunders questions were a joke, I recieved an 84 in the cumulative final exam in that book, and I think it was extremely easy.
So two weeks ago or so, after I had finished the comprehensive book, I started Saunders Q+A. I did the first 200 questions and averaged somewhere in the mid 70s, maybe 76 or 77. My issue with the Q+A book was that not it was too easy, there were most definately a bunch of difficult questions there, but they were almost all focusing more heavily on recall knoweledge and medical surgical knoweledge, (even though Saunders said each question was either Application or Analysis) rather than Nursing knoweledge. I knew that the content review may be ok, but as a real study method for the NCLEX, I don't think it was the best book for me.
So I dropped the Saunders Q+A book after 200 questions and started KAPLAN Qbank and Question trainers. Various people on this board and some friends who have passed the exam say Kaplan is the closest you can get to NCLEX difficulty and question style. (Although many people on this board say Kaplan is more difficult than NCLEX questions)
I decided to do question trainer 5 first, and recieved a 67, which I felt was really good, since Kaplan says you need a 65 on trainers 4+5. That made me happy and gave me some confidence.
During this time, I did a few Qbank questions, about 10-20 at a time randomly. Most were in the 60s, but for some wierd reason, I got a 40 once, and yet another time I got an 85. I consider those two outliers.
Kaplan says you need at least a 60 on the Qbank and question trainers 6+7, and based on my current Qbank average (63) and the many forum posts related to this topic here on allnurses.com, I think thats a fine score. Seems that a good score is between a 57 to 66 or so on the Qbank, and my last Qbank test (50 questions) was a 66, which was yesterday, so I feel a bit relaxed knowing I'm ok on that.
As for question trainers 6 and 7, I recieved a 64 on trainer 6 and a 70 on trainer 7.
So my overall scores are:
Saunders Comprehensive review (high 70s, low 80s average) 800ish questions
Saunders Q+A (mid-high 70s) 200 questions
Kaplan Qbank (63) 200+ questions
Kaplan Trainer 5 = 67
Kaplan Trainer 6 = 64
Kaplan Trainer 7 = 70
I'm forcing myself not to study today, because I don't think I will learn anything on the last day. Mostly i'm worried about the extremely tricky questions, sometimes Kaplan has a question with an answer that is wrong because of some extremely wierd reason, I don't always think Kaplans rationales are right, and they do contradict once in a while. (Example: Kaplan says when you have too much fluid, a daily weight is good to measure it, but for dehydration it is not good, but another question on another test, Kaplan says daily weight IS good for dehydration measuring too, this happens pretty often.)
Sometimes I don't agree with their rationales, such as they seem to throw Maslow out the window whenever they feel like it. They explained some patient was admitted to a hospital and was agitated and acting strangely and the police had to use force to subdue her, and the two best choices were, tell her she is safe and no one will hurt her, or perform a physical exam on her. I chose perform a physical exam, since the police had been forceful with her, she was found on the street in the rain, barefoot, seems physilogical issues were a priority here. Kaplan disagreed and told me I should tell her she is safe first, to establish a good relationship and to not have her fight me during the physical exam. I kind of see it from their perspective, but at the same time, she might have been seriously hurt and I believed that was the priority.
Another example being passengers sick on a cruise ship, the two best choices were a guy with hearing loss and a low fever and another guy with very serious dizziness, the guy explained that everything was simply swimming. I knew that fever is important, but I thought the priority would be the guy with everything swimming in front of his eyes, since thats a risk for injury, but Kaplan said the feverish patient was more important since he was already sick. Maslow does put physilogy as a priority to safety, but in some instances Kaplan seems to override it, and I'm hoping the real NCLEX doesn't give these tough wierd choices.
Man, I think I went on too much of a rant there. I originally posted this to ask some people who had passed what they thought my chances were of passing, I guess this also turned into a bleeding off emotions thing, the night before the exam!
Before I forget, overall I did 800 easy Saunders Comp questions, 200 Q+A questions, 600ish Kaplan Kaplan Trainer questions and 200 or so Kaplan Qbank questions. Around 1800 questions all together. Earlier in the summer for fun I did some NCLEX 3500-4000 questions, about 100-200 or so, found them easier than I expected, thats why I stopped using it, good for content review though.
So what are my chances here, can I pass tomorrow? I'm worried sick about those SATAs, since I did horribly with them in Kaplan and Ive seen people get 20+ on the NCLEX, far more than Kaplan did, so I'm worried about that.
Oh and do they give you a locker to put your cell phone during the exam, or should I not bring it?
Thanks for reading this, I appreciate any comments and suggestions. :)
.thumb.jpg.421493329dd1f136a4222fe8e9399213.jpg){kind=small}
frostrambler
22 Posts
Well its over with, 75 questions, 1.5 hours and I think I failed quite badly. Yeah I know that everyone always thinks they failed, but I am pretty damn sure of it. Out of my last 5 questions, at least 2 were easy identification questions, and I had a ton of SATAs that I was never good with