Passed! Here's my advice
Hey all, passed in 85 so let's have a huge long breakdown. This is all just my personal advice, don't take it if it doesn't work for you! Disclaimer, it doesn't matter if you pass in 85 or the max. You get the same license at the end anyways!
TAKE THE EXAM AS SOON AS YOU FEEL READY. I would recommend 2-3 weeks. You've spent at least 2 years studying for this exam already! Trust me when I say that the exam is so broad, there's no way to study it all. Let alone retain it all. Take those few weeks and review the big stuff: SAFETY, heart failure, rhythm strips, accelerations/decelerations for baby. Prioritization was huge, as well as anticipating what orders to expect from docs. I would recommend Mark K's lecture 12. They're on spotify ;)
I USED ARCHER AND MARK K. I will say I wasn't the smartest person in my class, but I was one of the most disciplined. Just do the work. Don't wait till you're motivated or it will never come. I did 85 questions a day (or more if I was feeling particularly motivated). I didn't listen to all the mark K lectures, just the ones that covered my weak areas. You need to do practice questions to identify those weak areas. I did about 50% of the Qbank but definitely could have done less. My friend gave me her Uworld access, and I gave her my archer password just to try it out. I will say I liked Archer A LOT more. My friend said the questions were harder on Archer. MAKE SURE YOU REVIEW THOSE RATIONALES.
TEST EXPERIENCE. Take the test in the afternoon. You'll be more awake and ready to go, hopefully will have worked out most of the jitters before that time. For me, it didn't feel real until I was about to walk into the testing center. There wasn't a lick of test anxiety until 10 minutes before going in. It was scary! I did wear perfume that morning and the proctor made me try to wipe it off before going in... I don't think that was necessarily an NCLEX thing as much as it was a "her" issue though lol. When you arrive you'll check in and do the palm scan, then take your picture. They'll pat you down, make you roll up your sleeves, take off any jackets/vests, empty your pockets, take your hair down & shake it out, and they won't let you take claw clips in there FYI. There were so many people in the room taking tests other than the NCLEX. They give you a laminated sheet with a marker that you can use as scratch paper. They give you the option to use noise-cancelling earmuffs. The proctor will log in and then you will begin. I felt like I knew nothing the whole test, just throwing my best guess out there for question after question. MY FRIENDS AND I ALL HAD EXAMS EXTREMELY CASE STUDY HEAVY. I mean case study after case study after case study. I don't feel like the exam was particularly heavy in any area. When you finish your exam, the computer will literally just go black. Raise your hand to be escorted out of the testing area and you're done! The exam took me about an hour but I have always been a VERY fast test taker. I feel like my friends and I averaged about 2 hours, mostly due to having to read all the case studies.
RESULTS. I took my exam at 3 and got my results at 8:30PM same day. Well, I didn't get my results from pearson but I got my license emailed to me so that's how I knew.
Feel free to ask as many questions as you'd like below!