Kaplan: Day Three

Pretty much the same routine today. Just answering a bunch of NCLEX questions with the instructor walking us through each question using the Kaplan Decision Tree. Each day we cover a different area (see schedule on yesterday's "Day Two" post), so the content changes and there's still stuff to learn and to consider.

During our one hour break, I didn't really break, I just played on my computer and then got REALLY sleepy right before we were supposed to start back. So when class began, I laid back on the sofa, my head on a pillow...and oops! I dozed off for about 5-10 minutes. hahaha! Not good. So I forced myself to sit back up and drank some cold water...

Tomorrow's schedule has us independently taking our "Readiness Test" during the time period when we'd normally meet for our first session and then we meet back online for the second session late afternoon. My understanding is that we'll go through a select number of the questions from the Readiness Test - perhaps the most commonly missed questions--I'm not sure. But then they'll also generically discuss our results and what they mean for us and what we need to do to get ourselves ready to take the NCLEX using Kaplan's resources--based on the results of the tests within Kaplan's site.

I went ahead and took my Readiness Test this evening, so that I don't have to do it tomorrow. 180 questions in three hours! ugh. I'm glad it's over with! But I couldn't believe my eyes when I got my result!  My score was EXACTLY the same as what I got on my Diagnostic Test (which was the test required to be taken before starting this class). So, I'm not sure what this means. Possibly, that I didn't learn anything or possibly that it didn't really help me. But I'm just very happy that I didn't score worse, as I'd interpret that as I just got lucky on the first test or else Kaplan just screwed me up.

Kaplan explains that for NCLEX the goal is 50%. That's just the way the Computer Adaptive Testing works to determine competency above or below the line.  Below is the explanation we were given in class regarding goal scores:


"The goal score for Question Trainers 1-5 is 65%. For the Readiness, Question Trainers 6 and 7 and all QBank tests, the goal is 60%. Remember that every candidate taking the NCLEX®RN examination gets 50% of their questions correct and 50% of the questions wrong.  The difference between passing and failing is level of difficulty of question.  If you are getting 50% of your questions correct answering passing level questions, you will pass. Passing questions are written at the application/analysis level of Blooms Taxonomy."


So for those of you who have been online and have seen people posting their scores on the Readiness and Question Trainers, understanding the above, will hopefully help. Kaplan does a great job of explaining how NCLEX determines passing/not passing.

So I'm sure you are wondering what my scores were? Okay, okay. On both my Diagnostic and my Readiness Tests, I scored a 69%.  So I'm well above the 50% and well above the 60% -- so that is encouraging. But I really don't understand why I didn't score higher on my Readiness Test after spending three days learning Decision Tree strategy. My theory is that I really just need to jump back into the content and review what I've forgotten or never learned. I've been surprised at what I have retained and how things will just jump back into my head when I'm working on NCLEX questions (even for the past two weeks). My biggest fear has been that it's been slowly draining out of my head. Review, review, review! Practice, practice, practice!

Well, it is late and I'm beat. Until tomorrow...

UPDATE:
My Kaplan instructor explained that the Diagnostic Test had questions from every level, but that the Readiness Test included only "passing level" questions. So the Readiness Test was actually harder, so the fact that I kept a high score was a good thing.