The Benefits of Taking an NCLEX Practice Exam

As with any other type of standardized test, you can boost your score on the NCLEX exam by taking a practice exam first.  However, it's important to remember that the practice exam should be only one part of your preparation strategy – you'll still need to keep studying even if you do well on a practice exam!  Because the exam questions can change a great deal from year to year, you'll need to be prepared to demonstrate your knowledge in many different ways.

Navigating NCLEX questions

If you take a sample NCLEX exam, you'll have the opportunity to work with each of the five types of questions you're likely to find, including standard multiple choice questions, multiple choice questions with more than one answer, mathematical calculations, problems based on diagrams and questions on procedural order.  It's very important to go over your notes and textbooks and think about how various kinds of information could be tested.  Taking a practice test will help identify your areas of weakness – if you tend to have problems with math problems, you may want to devote more time to studying them. 

Developing NCLEX test-taking strategies

Even though the computer will select your next question, there are still some test-taking strategies you can take advantage of.  Unfortunately, because the exam is computerized, going through the questions will be more time consuming than it would be if you were able to simply look over the entire exam and answer the easiest questions first.  However, if you have strategies for dealing with each type of question, you can implement these methods quickly once you've recognize what kind of question you're dealing with. 

Getting accustomed to the NCLEX format

Because all NCLEX exams are administered at computer terminals, it's worth your while to take an NCLEX practice test via the same method.  Doing so will give you the opportunity to observe how the computer moves from one type of question to another.  You may also be able to figure out how to gauge your responses so that the computer selects questions more to your liking.  Of course, it's important to remember that the computer will stop issuing questions once it becomes certain that you'll either pass or fail, so don't put too much effort into cheating the system.

In addition, it will be to your advantage to take an NCLEX practice exam in a computerized format because you'll want to make sure you know how to go back to previous questions, as well as how to skip ahead, if possible.  In some cases, this may make it possible for you to use the test-taking strategies you've used on other types of exams. 

If you haven't yet taken a standardized test via computer, it's very important to try and take a sample test via this method.  Knowing what to expect from the computer will help you feel more relaxed when you take the actual NCLEX exam.  In addition, taking a practice exam will give you an excellent opportunity to try actual questions under realistic time constraints.  That said, even if you can't afford to take a computer-based sample exam, you should at least try out the sample exams found in paper based study guides in order to become more comfortable with the test.