I passed but holy crap for all you worrying - it’s okay
For all you out there worrying - I get it now. I did Nurse achieve because it was required my last semester in school and Bootcamp for prep. I remember my first practice test with nurse achieve and it’s an adaptive test and actually shows you where you go up and down on the line. I failed the first one I attempted but not by much (before any studying) and it went to 150. I then passed my next test attempt at 150 and then finally got passes at 85. I then switched to bootcamp cause nurse achieve expired and while it was fantastic (super detailed rationales) and hard, I was looking for something else. I liked bootcamp - paid for a month cause my test was less than that away. I did 4 readiness tests, got very high likelihood on all 4. I did 90% of their question bank and was getting an average of 71 on the questions. Felt I gotta be ready now….
Wrote my test yesterday and omg. I swear I got a medication question for a med they made up. Never heard of it or its suffixes lol. Got 4 or so case studies, and almost every question was like I’ve never seen this before. The exam felt so hard and it shut off at 85. I went home feeling like either I passed or holy crap I was so bad it didn’t even let me do 150 cause I was so bad.
I was re hashing every question I could remember and even the ones I was confident about I started thinking did they ask what shows this patient is improving or did I read it wrong and it should have been not improving. You really get in your own head and doubt everything.
Then I thought - even my very first practice test, I failed but it let me go to 150. I told myself I had to have passed cause I couldn’t haven been worse than when I first started. I’ll tell you it didn’t reassure me much! I tried to distract myself all night but thought omg I’m going to have to tell my new nursing job that “hey you hired a dud that failed miserably so please give me a temp license.”
If you are panicking - stop. The NCLEX is a mind fuck and you walk out of there feeling like you prepared for nothing and that you failed. People told me that and I walked in feeling so prepared and ready and said naw, I’ll know how it goes. I didn’t.
I passed - deep down I thought I had to have but it was still so scary cause that fear was always there. For those freaking out after writing - calm down, it’s okay and trust in yourself and your prep! Odds are, if you prepared and it shuts off at 85 - the odds are forever in your favor!