I see this question a lot on popular NCLEX help forums. Students who have practiced with Uworld despair of their 50s and 60s scores and ask the following question: "How do I know when my Uworld score is high enough? Should I aim for 80%? Because I'm really far from there and my NCLEX is three days away. I am freaking out!"
Believe it or not, the reason that I recommend Uworld as a primary question resource is because its questions are harder than NCLEX. "Really?" REALLY!
It is so tough that as long as you're scoring low to mid-60%s, you are gonna be just fine. The reason it's harder, in my opinion, is because real NCLEX questions need a certain percentage of test takers to get them right in order for them to become real NCLEX questions. (You didn't know that every NCLEX contains at least 15 questions that don't count toward your final score? Yep.) For enough people to get them right, the questions can only be so difficult.
Uworld, on the other hand, paid some people a lot of money to write these questions. They have intimate knowledge of the material and pretty much no one to say "is this question too hard?" other than maybe a boss or two. It's a limited pool of people to test their questions on, and therefore some of the questions end up harder than the real thing.
Are you guaranteed to pass the NCLEX if you're scoring in the 60%s on Uworld? No, of course not. There are no guarantees in life, and if anxiety gets the worst of you or you happen to have a rough test, you may still fail. Scoring in the 60s on Uworld is simply a good indicator that you will most likely pass this test without the need to improve your scores any further. Remember that this test is a pass/fail and that no one is handing out goodies for you to pass it in 75 questions. All you get is bragging rights, but even that isn't going to affect your career as a nurse any longer than the first month of your nursing practice. And it's certainly not going on your resume.
Once you get to passing level percentages on Uworld, have some faith that you have done your due diligence and do everything else you can to ensure you'll have a great test day.
But what if you're not scoring where you would like to on Uworld? The answer is most likely a content problem. Fix it up right here - and the solution is pretty cost-effective. WAY less than you paid for Uworld! (Thank goodness!)