I passed Excelsior Anatomy and Physiology!!

Nursing Students Excelsior

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I studied for about 7 weeks, with about 6 weeks of actual study (when I minus out holidays and family events) and passed with a B!! Very excited!

I used the StudyGuide 101 guide, VangoNotes audio study material (awesome!), Mosby's Anatomy & Physiology Study and Review Cards, Excelsior practice exams, and good old Google for info I didn't understand via the other methods!

I must say, I thought the test was tough. I test well and was counting on that helping me out with my shortened study time but that test was definitely to be respected. Lots of deductive reasoning involved. But, for only 6 weeks of study, I'm thrilled with my score.

I thought the SG101 stuff was great, especially for the money. The guides are great. In my opinion most of the other supplemental stuff they give you is worthless. Links that don't work, missing info. I even found quite a few incorrect answers on some of the practice exams they give you. But, that's okay. That's not what I bought it for. The study guides themselves were great.

I used the study guides as the basis for my study. I would record myself reading them out loud using a high quality voice recorder and then listen to them while I was on my way to and from work. I found that to be very effective at helping me retain the info. For some reason, I think hearing your OWN voice is much more effective than having someone else read them for you.

The VangoNotes were GREAT for learning some of the more difficult topics. They used great analogies and explained things in a very simple method. Definitely would recommend them.

The Excelsior practice exams, as others have stated, were priceless in terms of the knowledge you can gleen from them!

I picked up the Mosby's cards from Barnes and Noble. I was looking for some kind of flash cards that were pre-made. I really did NOT want to make my own, even though I realize the benefits of the kinesthetic learning from righting things down. These cards were great because they were so much MORE than flash cards. They are full out review cards! They have great illustrations and can test you on an entire system (e.g. cell organelles, bones of the scull) on one card. So each card is like 20 flash cards and there's 320 cards in the set. A LOT of info. The illustrations are beautiful and very helpful. Really helped me with the visual learning.

So, all in all, a pretty good experience. I absolutely LOVED studying for this. Anat and Phys is fascinating to me! I honestly could not get home quick enough some days to get studying! (except for the urinary system... I hated that one! Remind me to never go into Urology! Ha! :) )

Thanks for all your support!

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Specializes in ER, IICU, PCU, PACU, EMS.

Moved to distance learning forum for more of a response.

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Thanks Medic2RN

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Specializes in EMS, ED, Trauma, CEN, CPEN, TCRN.

Great job! A&P was the first EC exam I took, and I was thrilled with my B! That was back in the day before SG101, unfortunately. Big fan of SG101.

Congrats!!! :)

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what is sg101? I am struggling with AP

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Study Guides
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Yep. reebokHCFR is right. A group of nurses who published their study guides for Excelsior exams. Pretty helpful.

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they are very good and they're much more than just some people's study guides.

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We have purchased & used as reference the most current published editions of the recommended textbooks & scoured the Web for useful web pages for you to visit for additional information. We have spent countless hours (& years!) typing, editing, researching, and obtaining permission and license to offer you the material you need to pass these exams.

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ummm. ok. are you getting defensive here? did i in some way insult you or them by calling them study guides? isn't that what you called them as well?

they are, simply, study guides. this should not be misrepresented. they published their outlines and added some info to use for supplementary study. most of which, might i add, either doesn't work or is illegible. don't get me wrong, i am a big fan of sg101. i used their outlines solely for a&p and passed after a month (roughly). their price can not be beat and i am very grateful for their product.

but please don't spin them as more than they are. they are "some people's" study guides. they are not a course. they are not a text book. they are designed to help you study. that's what a study guide is and that is all they claim to be.

i would advise to use the outlines. in my experience, most of the supplemental stuff, unfortunately, doesn't add much. they take powerpoint slides and condense them to the point that the text is no longer rendered legible. they don't understand how pdfs work so they give you pages of "links" in pdf files that won't work because they aren't actually linked. they are just words, in blue, that are underlined. for example. i have provided this feedback to the group in hopes they can fix it because i hate to see such a great product and service devalued by simple technology issues.

so, reebokhcfr, i'm not sure what your post was trying to accomplish, but please don't try to make things more than they are. or, for that matter, more than they even claim to be.

as for sg101? i think they are an awesome group of people who wanted to help other nursing students by sharing the hard work they have done. many thanks!

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yes I read that as less than they are. some people publishing their personal study guides for their personal study habits from whenever they took the class is not what they are. they are study guides made for the classes that research the recommended texts and follow the content outlines so you don't have to. they are also not just designed to help you study, but to be the sole resource to use and pass for your exam(s), as noted in the link I posted.

So, ProVisionColor, please know the point of my post was to make sure people are aware of what they are, because when I was trying to decide what resource to use for my classes, reading your post (#6) would have turned me off of sg101, and I would hate for that to happen to someone.

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i'm sorry. you are mistaken. from their own site, the link that you posted:

"many students have used these guides exclusively to study for, and pass, their exams & have had great results. not everyone will feel comfortable doing his or her study in that way, but it is an option."

they make it clear that you could use these alone, but they are not sold as that. as the site states, it's simply an option. if you scour this forum, you will notice that the majority of people who used sg101, used them as a portion of their study and not their only form of study. in fact, i must retract my earlier statement where i claimed i only used the guides for a&p because i just remembered that i used vangonotes, mosby's flash cards, excelsior practice exams, as well as good old google to explain things that were not clear in the guides (which is in my original post).

in fact, i found multiple instances where the guides are actually wrong! one case involved an included practice exam of some sort and i found multiple wrong answers! multiple answers! that practice was worthless and possibly, depending on the student, detrimental.

the entire section on the cv system was so frustrating that i left it entirely for other resources as they had completely omitted the words "increases" and "decreases" when talking about blood pressure. they were just blank. big blank spots in the middle of the sentences. "vascular resistance blood pressure." is it increases or decreases? (obvious example) really helpful when you're studying the section on blood pressure, don't you think?

i'm sorry, but sg101 is not a major research and education institution. they are what they are. regular people who passed the tests and decided to give back. anyone with an analytical eye can see this. the information is loosely thrown together, at best. it is left up to the student to figure how to make sense of it all. they gathered as much info as they could and put it together in a package. bless them for it.

maybe you are like me and tend to test well. if so, that's awesome. you are lucky. i consider myself very blessed with that ability. not everyone is like that.

someone may misinterpret your endorsment and study only these guides and then fail the exam. i would hate for that to happen.

i stick by my original statement. sg101 is a group of nurses who published their study guides.

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I agree with you on everything you said. I wasn't impressed with their stuff. Personally I used Lisa Larends notes they are $60 for all the nursing tests and even though she makes up her own abbreviations after you figure them out it was pretty much all I used. I had the edition from 2006 and used it in 2010-11 (took longer to do pre reqs) and they were fine.

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