The NCLEX is a test that will destroy the confidence of any test-taker. Apart from its targeted questioning varying in number, select-all-that-apply questions that never seem to end, and the wide-open prairies of information you have to know, you'll pass it no problem. Unless you don't. By the time you pay for another ATT to reschedule, your confidence is most likely in the toilet. Not only did you attempt this beast of a test, but you failed. You failed. Losers fail. People who should be attempting other careers fail. Stupid people fail. Wrong! Not with this test. Let's curb your self-pity in its tracks. 1. For a test that's supposed to be an evaluation of minimum competency of nurses, the NCLEX is a crappy predictor of who will make a good nurse and who won't. I cannot even begin to name the names of all the LPNs and RNs I know who failed the NCLEX at least once if not multiple times. Some of them are my mentors, some of them are my colleagues, but my point is that they are all great nurses. I also cannot begin to name the number of nurses I know who passed the NCLEX and are dumber than rocks. To the point where you wonder, almost daily, how the heck they passed their test. Um, maybe because it's a poor indicator of success? 2. The NCLEX does not measure real-world skills. And hello, nursing is made up of real world skills! You can't place a urinary catheter just by reading about it, and you can't make a frightened kid getting a cast feel any better by explaining the various complications that could happen to him. The NCLEX fails in evaluating the psychosocial skills (despite that being one of the informational categories!) that potential nurses may possess and even make their specialty. It's my opinion that this is a huge failure. Potential nurses need to be able to demonstrate skills to teach patient their own disease management. They need to know how to give meds via peg tubes and apply a wet-to-dry dressing on a wound. Student nurses might get the opportunity to attempt the above skills. That doesn't mean they're being tested on them. I myself emerged as a nurse having had zero practice with g-tubes. I had to learn by myself, one hot afternoon in a group home setting where I sweated over my patient as I attempted to figure out how to disconnect the feeding line. If I knew that demonstrating a skill would possibly be required for the NCLEX, I have no doubt it would have been featured in my nursing school curriculum, at least as more than a vague mention. 3. The question source you used may have affected your success more than you know. Most nursing school programs set up students with some sort of review course or question bank. This is because their pass rates suffer unless their students, you know, pass, and then their enrollment drops. It's in their best interest to support your studying. That being said, some programs can afford better reviews and resources than others. Kaplan Qbank is better than Saunders. Lippincott is better than Kaplan. UWorld is about equal to Lippincott. What did your school recommend or provide? Where does your question source rank? More on that in a later post. The point is that you may need to switch up your question bank when you return to studying because it's possible you're focusing on the wrong topics, the wrong depth into those topics, or the wrong information related to them. Do your homework- it could pay off in the form of a pass. Okay, that's enough wallowing in misery. Get back to studying, and pass that damn test!!