Our school required we buy this online tutoring program. It is supposed to run you through the 7 areas: fundamentals, pharmacology, pediatrics, mental health, medical-surgical, maternity, and nursing management. This company places you with a tutor, and you do an initial assessment. You go through the books and after each one, you take a test. If you don't score 60% or better, you must do homework to help you improve your score. Then you take it again. It gives you a read out of areas you missed and what you need to work on. I got through fundamentals just fine but pharmacology....I fell short. Again and again, so close but not 60%. The tutor wouldn't let me advance. Really? I paid you $400 to teach me, but you can't advance me until I reach the exact benchmark? I just gave up trying to use them. Besides the aforementioned scenario, their questions were not formatted to helping me with NCLEX. When I started nursing school in the fall of '11, we were required to buy Saunders Comprehensive Review for NCLEX-PN. I had listened to my dean at my school when she said, "if you really want to pass NCLEX-PN, then after lecture every day, use the Saunders book and reinforce it." So, I went through the entire book, and accompanying disc with chapter questions on it. However, I still did not feel adequately prepared. I began to search online for alternatives. Kaplan was good, I had heard, but very expensive. I had less than 4 weeks before I tested and their program was more involved than I had time or money for. NCSBN.org is the organization which I took my jurisprudence test for state licensure and I was told they were the people who came up with the NCLEX questions. So I signed up for the 3 week PN review.
It did the same as the other companies, but was affordable ($50) and I went through the test questions as many times as I needed to, which really helped. I would highly recommend them if you need lots of repetition to grasp a concept.
I planned on taking NCLEX-PN Saturday, March 23, 2013. Every spare minute I had, I was going through questions. I added up over 4,000 questions and rationales that I had done. Finally, the day came. I showed up early and they decided to go ahead and take me early! Holy cow! My nerves took over and I headed for the bathroom! So, I still started at the time I was supposed to. ;)
There were many checks of identity, and finally I was sitting down. "Don't stress: you studied, God is with you...." I kept saying in my head over and over again. Then came the first question. I looked at the screen and thought, " I am so in trouble! I wonder how long it will take me to save up to take this again?" I literally prayed through each question. When I got to question 84, I got nervous again. You see, you can fabulously fail with 85 questions or spectacularly pass with the same amount of questions. The minimum questions for NCLEX-PN is 85. The computer will keep asking questions until you get at least 50% correct. 15 of the questions are "experimental" and if you miss those, it's no big deal. But you don't get credit if they are right, either. You have up to 205 questions unless the computer deems that you are not going to pass based on the amount of high level questions you got right.
After question 85, the screen went blue."Oh, no..." My breathing went shallow. I raised my hand and the attendant escorted me to the office. I called Hunnybunny who was very surprised to hear from me. "It's over?" Yes, it's over, I told him. I felt the way I was supposed to after NCLEX: exactly like I failed. No tears or boo-hooing for me, though. It was what it was. I had spent over 300 hours studying. If I wasn't ready by then, I didn't think anything would help.
I had heard about the Pearson Vue trick a year or so ago. After the results are transmitted, you can try to register again for the exam. If it takes your credit card, it means you failed. If you get this pop-up, ( see below) it means you have passed.
