What you Need to Know about the NCLEX

Every nursing student sooner or later becomes aware of the test known as NCLEX (National Council Licensure Examination) that they must pass to be accepted by their state licensing board as a either a practical nurse (LPN or LVN) or as a registered nurse (RN). The NCLEX is administered by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing to ensure that the student meets uniform professional standards of education, skills and knowledge as required by the various state nursing boards.

There are several forces at work in the formation and content of this test. Awareness of these dynamics and how they work can greatly reduce the student’s anxiety and improve the likelihood of passing on the first try. The format of the NCLEX is a computerized adaptive test (CAT). In a CAT, the difficulty of each question is based on whether the previous one was correctly answered. After each correct answer, the candidate is presented with a question of increased difficulty. A wrong answer is followed by a question of similar difficulty so that the testing process provides, usually within 75 to 150 questions, a very accurate evaluation of the level of academic achievement of the person being tested.

Constantly revised to reflect the advances in medical technology and changes in clinical and administrative procedures, the questions are formulated and carefully vetted by nurses and educators who continue to emphasize the importance of a nurse’s problem solving ability: to pass the test, you have to think like a nurse!

According to NCLEX administrators, the NCLEX-RN has a slightly higher pass rate than the NCLEX-PN. To improve on this, the student should follow an appropriate course of study at an institution that offers a dedicated program with a significantly higher success rate. Unitek College offers a two-stage, multi-entry, multi-exit series of programs in its fully accredited Nursing Training Institute.

The nursing programs at Unitek College offer training for LVN certification and licensing. At both the Fremont and the Santa Clara campuses, Unitek College nursing students work with highly trained nursing professionals in classroom and clinical courses of study to learn the skills and knowledge required from a well trained nurse.