Preparing for the National Nursing Exam is a challenging process that requires creative strategies. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of progress test, a tailored program to familiarize students with the National Exam test system and questions, on the students’ performance in the Nursing Exam Try Out. This study was a pre-experimental study with one group pre and post-test design. Of the total 143 eligible internship nursing students, 139 participated in the pretest and 125 finished the post-test within 2 months duration. During the study, the students were practicing online through the progress test program in their 6 different home-based hospitals in Yogyakarta and Central Java. The 180 multiple choice questions for progress test were developed based on the National Nursing Exam Blue Print and have been reviewed by the internal reviewers. The result of the study showed that there was a statistically significant increase of the exam score from 43.75±9.59 to 48.49±SD 7.83 (p 0.000). With passing grade of 47, only 57.6 % students passed the exam in the pretest while 62.5 % passed the exam in posttest. The progress test can be used as an effective strategy to prepare and increase the possibility to pass the National Nursing Exam.