Failed the NCLEX: what to do next

You can retake the NCLEX after 45 days, up to eight times a year, unless your board is stricter. See the retake steps, how to read your CPR and how to plan.

Key points

NCSBN's retake policy: wait 45 days, up to eight attempts a year.
Your board may set a longer wait or a limit on attempts.
Start with the areas your CPR marks below the passing standard.
REx-PN: wait 60 days, up to six attempts a year.

If you failed the NCLEX, you can take it again. NCSBN's policy is a wait of 45 days and up to eight attempts a year, and some boards set stricter limits.

Sources checked 6 October 2026.

When you can retake

The 45 days are the national minimum. Your board can make you wait longer, cap your attempts or ask for a review course after a set number of failures. Your new Authorization to Test shows the dates you are allowed to sit.

The retake date checker works out your earliest date from your last attempt. It shows your board's rule where we could confirm it on an official page, with the link.

The steps to retake

NCSBN lists four steps.

Contact your board and tell it you plan to retake. It tells you which fees or documents it needs.
Register with Pearson VUE again and pay the registration fee.
Wait for your new Authorization to Test.
Book a new appointment.

You pay the registration fee for every attempt. It is US$200 until 31 January 2027 and US$350 from 1 February 2027. See the NCLEX fee rise.

Read your Candidate Performance Report

Candidates who do not pass receive a Candidate Performance Report (CPR). For each content area of the test plan and for clinical judgment, it places you in one of three bands: below the passing standard, near it or above it.

The bands describe your ability in each area. Use them to decide where your study hours go.

What people who failed say helped

These points come from Reddit threads that rank for this search. They are people's own accounts. Nobody has tested them, and what suits one person may not suit you.

Take a break first. A reply in a r/PassNclex thread from someone who failed a third time suggests a week or two away from studying, then 20 to 30 questions a day for about a month.
Practise select-all-that-apply and priority questions. Another reply in the same thread says the current exam leans on both. See how SATA questions are scored.
Start from the CPR. In a r/nursing thread, a repeat taker who passed the second time describes reading each CPR category and practising the below-passing areas first.
Change how you answer questions. A reply in the same thread says more questions did not help as much as learning to break down priority and clinical judgment questions and to understand the rationales.

Plan the next attempt

You have at least 45 days. Open the study plan builder, choose "Retake" and tick the areas your CPR lists as below or near the passing standard. The plan puts those areas first and gives them more hours.

Then work through the plan in Medibara, our app for NCLEX-RN, NCLEX-PN and REx-PN. It is free to start.

For each area your CPR marks below the standard, sit a topic mock. A topic mock covers one Client Needs area, so you see which of its topics you miss.
Do the lessons on those topics. Each lesson is a short video that explains one topic, followed by questions on it in your exam's format.
When a rationale does not make sense, tap "Ask Cappy why". Cappy is the tutor. It answers from the lesson and shows where the answer comes from. This is the step the thread reply above describes: understanding the rationale, where more questions alone did not help.
Open Progress once a week. It shows how you do in each test plan area and marks the weakest "Focus next". Move to the areas your CPR marks "Near" when the first ones stop appearing there.
Before your new date, sit the full adaptive mock. It runs under exam rules: answers lock when you move on, and rationales wait until the end.

A mock result in Medibara is our estimate from your answers. It is not a prediction from NCSBN. Start learning on Medibara.

If you are also choosing a different question bank this time, read what test takers recommend and UWorld and Archer compared.

If you failed REx-PN

The REx-PN retake policy is a wait of 60 days and up to six attempts a year. The College of Nurses of Ontario and the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives both say there is no limit on the number of attempts. You get a Candidate Performance Report, and you pay the exam fee again for each attempt.

The same plan works in Medibara for REx-PN. Choose REx-PN as your exam and the lessons and questions use SI units, Celsius and Canadian terms. Case studies, bow-tie and matrix questions do not appear, because REx-PN does not use them.

Sources