How to Read Your NCLEX Candidate Performance Report (CPR) Line by Line

Quick answer: The NCLEX Candidate Performance Report (CPR) is a two-page report your board of nursing sends only if you fail; it can take up to six weeks to arrive. It rates you Above, Near or Below the passing standard in each of the eight test plan content areas and in Clinical Judgment. Give Below areas the most study time, drill Near areas almost as hard, and keep Above areas on light maintenance.

Your board of nursing sent the report. You opened it. You see “Above,” “Near,” and “Below the passing standard” across eight content areas and you do not know what any of it actually means for your next 45 days. This is the line-by-line walkthrough of your NCLEX Candidate Performance Report — what each section tells you, what your weakness pattern actually says about your prep, and how to translate the whole thing into a remediation plan that works. Plus one worked example: a sample CPR pattern turned into a 45-day plan.

What the CPR is and when you get it

The Candidate Performance Report (CPR) is NCSBN’s diagnostic feedback document for candidates who did not pass the NCLEX. It is generated automatically when your result is finalized as a fail. It is mailed (or posted to your state BON portal, depending on state) within approximately six weeks of your exam.

The CPR is NOT available for candidates who pass. NCSBN says this more detailed feedback is meant to help failing candidates direct their remediation; giving it to people who do not need remediation serves no purpose and could be misused by candidates or employers in making employment decisions.

The document has two usable parts: a cover confirming the result and how many items you were administered, and the performance breakdown, which rates you Above, Near or Below the passing standard in each of the eight test plan content areas and in Clinical Judgment, both overall and for each of its six steps (Recognize Cues, Analyze Cues, Prioritize Hypotheses, Generate Solutions, Take Actions, Evaluate Outcomes). That breakdown is what you actually work from.

Section 1: the cover — your overall decision

The cover page confirms your pass/fail status. If you are reading this because you received a CPR, you already know it says “did not pass.” The cover may also include administrative metadata (your candidate ID, exam date, number of items you took, duration of exam). None of this changes your plan.

Skip past the cover. The actionable content is section 2.

Section 2: content-area performance

The CPR breaks your performance down across the eight Client Needs subcategories of the current NCLEX-RN test plan. For each subcategory, it assigns you one of three buckets: Above the passing standard, Near the passing standard, or Below the passing standard.

Under the 2026 NCLEX-RN Test Plan (effective April 2026), these subcategories are:

• Management of Care (15-21% of exam)
• Safety and Infection Prevention and Control (10-16%)
• Health Promotion and Maintenance (6-12%)
• Psychosocial Integrity (6-12%)
• Basic Care and Comfort (6-12%)
• Pharmacological and Parenteral Therapies (13-19%)
• Reduction of Risk Potential (9-15%)
• Physiological Adaptation (11-17%)

The exam-weight percentages matter. A “Below” in Management of Care (up to 21% of the exam) is a bigger remediation problem than a “Below” in Health Promotion (up to 12%). Weight your study time proportional to subcategory weight.

See our 2026 passing standard guide for the full current test plan breakdown.

“Above the passing standard” — what it actually means

Above means your performance on items in this subcategory was clearly better than the minimum competency required. This is a strength. Translate it to your plan:

• Do not re-study content in “Above” areas. You already know this material well enough. Re-studying it is procrastination disguised as productivity.
• Do keep doing practice questions in Above areas sparingly — maybe 10-20% of your daily question volume — to prevent content decay during the 45-day wait.
• Your 45-day plan should spend less than 15% of study time here.

A CPR with 4-5 “Above” categories and 3-4 “Near” or “Below” is a great starting point. It means your content base is largely intact and remediation is about targeted repair, not a rebuild.

“Near the passing standard” — the dangerous category

This is the trap most repeat-takers fall into. Near means your ability estimate in that subcategory landed close to the passing threshold without being clearly at or above it. That is NCSBN’s own framing — the CPR states that “near the passing standard” does not imply that you performed “at or above” the standard, only that you performed in proximity to it, and NCSBN describes the rating as an ability estimate that is not clearly at or above the standard. Near is not a partial pass. It is a result the exam could not place cleanly on the passing side. Students see “Near” and read it as “I’m fine here” and spend their study time on Below areas instead.

That is the wrong read. A “Near” category is a category where you are one bad streak away from the wrong side. On a second attempt under pressure, Near categories are where students slide into Below and fail again. These are your biggest risk on the retake, not your Above areas and not even always your Below areas.

Plan treatment for Near categories:

• Spend 30-40% of your daily question volume here.
• Do NGN case studies that test these topics, not just standalone multiple choice.
• Review rationales for EVERY question in these areas, right or wrong, because your knowledge is fragile.
• By week 3 of remediation, your practice-question accuracy in these areas should be consistently 70%+.

“Below the passing standard” — where to spend most of your time

Below means your performance in this subcategory was clearly below the minimum competency threshold. This is where your content knowledge has real gaps.

Plan treatment for Below categories:

• Spend 40-50% of your daily study time here — but split evenly between content review and practice questions.
• Start with content: pull up our relevant resource posts or a reputable review book chapter on the topic. You need the material in memory before practice questions will stick.
• Move to practice questions with rationale review within a week. Do 30-50 questions per Below category per day.
• Target accuracy: 65%+ by end of week 3, 70%+ by end of week 5.

One common failure mode: students see “Below in Pharmacology” and decide to memorize 500 drug cards. That is not the play. Pharmacology “Below” usually means your clinical application of pharm knowledge is weak — patient scenarios, adverse effect recognition, drug-drug interactions. Drill those via NCLEX-style questions, not flashcards.

Worked example: sample CPR → 45-day plan

Here is a composite example pulled from common patterns on Reddit and in our failed-NCLEX guide.

Sample CPR pattern:

• Management of Care: Below
• Safety and Infection Prevention and Control: Near
• Health Promotion and Maintenance: Above
• Psychosocial Integrity: Above
• Basic Care and Comfort: Above
• Pharmacological and Parenteral Therapies: Below
• Reduction of Risk Potential: Near
• Physiological Adaptation: Near

Plan:

• Weeks 1-2: content rebuild. Management of Care (delegation, priority, ethical/legal) — 2 hours/day. Pharmacology — 2 hours/day with focus on high-alert medications, adverse effects, patient teaching. Start doing 20 practice questions in each Below area daily.
• Weeks 3-4: Near-area consolidation. Increase to about 150 practice questions/day total, split: 40% Below categories (about 30 per Below area), 40% Near categories, 20% Above (maintenance). Review every rationale. Target 65%+ accuracy in Below categories.
• Weeks 5-6: NGN immersion. All 6 NGN item types daily. Full CAT simulations twice per week. Close any remaining weak spots identified by CAT performance.
• Final days: light review, rest, test-day logistics. One light CAT 48 hours before. Do not cram content the last 3 days.

This is a 45-day plan built on a specific CPR pattern. Yours will differ in the proportions, but the framework — Below areas get content rebuild + heavy practice, Near areas get heavy practice + rationale depth, Above areas get maintenance only — is the same for almost every repeat-taker.

What the CPR does NOT tell you

Common misreadings to avoid:

• The CPR does not tell you how close you were to passing overall. You can have all Near and still fail by a wide margin. You can have one Below and still fail by a narrow margin. Category buckets do not map cleanly to a total score.
• The CPR does not tell you which specific topics you missed. “Below in Physiological Adaptation” covers dozens of disease states. Pick the highest-weight conditions (cardiac, respiratory, endocrine, neuro) and work those first.
• The CPR does not predict your retake probability. Students with three Below categories pass retakes all the time. Students with one Below fail retakes. What matters is your prep between attempts, not the starting CPR.
• The CPR is not a reflection of your intelligence or worth as a future nurse. It is a snapshot of performance on one exam on one day. Do not internalize it as identity.

Using the CPR to choose prep tools for round two

Different prep tools serve different weaknesses. The CPR tells you which tool profile you actually need:

• Heavy Below categories: you need a question bank with strong rationales plus content review. Don’t buy another flashcard app; you need depth.
• Mostly Near with a few Below: you need a question bank with NGN coverage and a solid CAT simulator. Your content is there; your application is the issue.
• Balanced Near/Above: you are probably a test-taking-strategy remediation case. Focus on how high-scorers read NCLEX questions and on CAT pacing.

The emotional reality of opening the CPR

Opening the envelope is hard. Staring at “Below the passing standard” in multiple categories is harder. It is okay to feel demolished for a day. Then get up.

Repeat-taker pass rates (52.7% for U.S.-educated candidates in 2025) are lower than first-time rates (86.7%), but more than half of repeat candidates pass. Whatever the odds, the CPR is what lets your second round of prep be different from the first, so use it.

A practice question on identifying priority weaknesses

The bottom line

Your CPR is not a verdict. It is a map. Below categories get content rebuild plus practice questions. Near categories get heavy practice with rationale depth. Above categories get maintenance only. Weight your time by exam percentage and by bucket severity. Run this plan for 45 days and your second round of prep will look nothing like your first.

If you failed, you are in a large and well-served community. More than half of U.S.-educated repeat candidates pass — 52.7% in 2025 (30.5% for internationally educated repeat takers). A plan built from your CPR gives you a clear place to start. Now you have the roadmap.

Related reading in this series

• The Pearson Vue Trick Honestly Explained — what PVT is, when it works, when it lies
• Shut Off at 85 Questions: Did You Pass or Fail? — what the CAT algorithm actually decided when the exam ended early
• The 48-Hour NCLEX Wait — every channel through which you find out your result, ranked by reliability