The NCLEX is the examination a candidate must pass to be licensed as a nurse in the United States. It comes in two versions, one for registered nurses and one for practical and vocational nurses, and it is written and administered by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing on behalf of its member boards.
Every state and territory uses it. Since 2015 most Canadian provinces have used the registered nurse version too, which was the first time the examination was adopted outside the United States.
The examination is a floor, not a credential in itself. Passing it establishes minimum competence to practice safely as a beginner. The license comes from a board of nursing, which also wants a background check, transcripts and fees. See nurse practice acts and boards of nursing.
How the test works
The NCLEX is computerized adaptive testing, which is why two candidates sitting side by side answer different questions and finish at different times.
The software estimates ability continuously. After each answer it re-estimates and selects the next question near the boundary of what the candidate appears able to do. The test ends when it can determine with 95 percent confidence that the candidate is above or below the passing standard, when the maximum number of questions is reached, or when time runs out.
Three consequences follow, and all three are widely misunderstood by candidates.
A short test is not a bad sign. It means the software reached confidence quickly, which happens for clear passes and clear failures alike.
Difficulty does not indicate performance. The algorithm aims at the boundary, so a candidate who is doing well is fed harder questions until they stop being easy. Feeling that the test was hard is the expected experience of nearly everyone.
Questions cannot be skipped or revisited. Each answer determines what comes next, so there is no reviewing at the end.
The Next Generation revision
The examination was substantially rebuilt in April 2023. The Next Generation NCLEX was the outcome of about a decade of research into why newly licensed nurses make errors, which pointed at clinical judgment rather than at knowledge recall.
The revision introduced the Clinical Judgment Measurement Model, which breaks decision making into recognizing cues, analyzing them, prioritizing hypotheses, generating solutions, taking action and evaluating outcomes, and it added item types built to test those steps: extended case studies that unfold across several questions as new information arrives, drag and drop and matrix items, and highlighting text in a clinical record.
It also changed scoring. Older item formats were right or wrong. Several of the new ones award partial credit, so a candidate who identifies three of four relevant findings scores better than one who identifies none, which is closer to how clinical reasoning actually degrades.
Pass rates
For first time candidates educated in the United States, the registered nurse pass rate was 79.9 percent in 2022, 88.56 percent in 2023 and 91.2 percent in 2024.
The jump across the 2023 revision looks counterintuitive and mostly is not about the test. The 2022 figure was the low point of a slide widely attributed to nursing students whose clinical placements were disrupted during the pandemic, and the recovery tracks those cohorts working through the system.
Pass rates for internationally educated candidates and for repeat candidates are substantially lower, and program level pass rates matter to schools because state boards use them as an accreditation threshold. A program that falls below a state's minimum for consecutive years can be placed on conditional approval or closed.
Retakes
A candidate who fails receives a diagnostic report showing performance by content area. The council's policy permits a retake after 45 days, and up to eight attempts in a twelve month period, but individual boards of nursing set their own limits on top of that and some are considerably stricter, including caps on total attempts and requirements to complete remedial education first.
Related
- Licensure by endorsement
- Nurse practice acts and boards of nursing
- Levels of nursing
- Entry into practice and the BSN requirement
Sources
- 2024 NCLEX examination statistics. National Council of State Boards of Nursing, Research Brief volume 94, July 2025. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- 2023 NCLEX examination statistics. National Council of State Boards of Nursing, Research Brief volume 88, June 2024. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Next Generation NCLEX. National Council of State Boards of Nursing, on the Clinical Judgment Measurement Model and new item types. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- NCLEX candidate bulletin. National Council of State Boards of Nursing, on adaptive testing, test length and retake policy. Accessed September 8, 2026.