EC Nursing Students Excel on National Licensing Exam

Before beginning her new job as a nurse at Upstate Golisano Pediatric Hospital, Elmira College alumna Calinda Ceterski ’22 spent many hours and days last summer studying for the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX). And the studying paid off. Ceterski, and the majority of her classmates, had a 91.4% pass rate on their first attempt at the difficult exam.

“The NCLEX is the hardest exam that any nurse has to take,” said Dr. Milissa Volino, Associate Professor of Nurse Education and Director of Nursing at EC.

Nursing graduates must pass the NCLEX to get a nursing license and work in the United States.

According to statistics from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), the national pass rate for U.S.-educated students taking the exam for the first time in 2022 was 79.9%.

“It’s such a hard test, and honestly, no one can tell you what goes on when you take it because you black out,” said Ceterski. She took the exam at the end of August to give herself plenty of time after graduation to study. “As per usual, everyone walks out thinking they failed.”

But Volino said it gets harder to pass the exam the longer a student is away from instruction. That is why the nursing faculty decided to take big measures to prepare students for success on their first attempt.

The program faculty adopted a test-prep software to get students accustomed to NCLEX-style questions. They added an extensive review to the program capstone course, provided free review sessions over the summer, and conducted private review sessions as needed.

“It made a difference,” Volino said, adding that these additional steps are not typical. “Many nursing programs don’t provide any NCLEX coaching.”

Beyond information reviews, the faculty taught the students about the best ways to study and prepare for the exam.

Ceterski attended a couple of the free summer sessions but couldn’t make it to many so she and Dr. Volino emailed back and forth.

“She would tell me about needing to complete 200 questions a day,” said Ceterski.

At the beginning of the summer, Ceterski completed a few questions and then took a break before returning to complete a few more questions. As the summer progressed, she increased the number of questions she completed each day. The week before the exam she studied six hours a day and found ways to review that suited her learning style.

“I’m an auditory learner, so the week before my test I listened to lectures in my car,” she said.

The effort obviously paid off.

But while helping students pass the NCLEX is a goal for the faculty, it isn’t their end game.

“The ultimate goal is to produce nurses who take excellent care of patients,” said Volino. “A student’s performance in their first year as a nurse is critical to their longer-term career. We provide 180 hours of field experience with a staff nurse in the final term. By the end of that experience, they are taking care of a full patient load and I think it puts them ahead in their first job.”

Ceterski agreed. She interned at Upstate Galisano Pediatric Hospital and was hired before she graduated. She’s been in her new role for six months and she is grateful for her Elmira College education.

“The faculty taught me how to learn fast,” she said. “There is so much you don’t know when you start - which is expected - but what I’ve heard from our clinical leaders and supervisors is that I take constructive criticism well. I think the professors at EC teach us how to do that well. They taught us how to cope with stressful situations and how to learn to be a learner. These tools will carry me further than just learning the basics.”