I stalked this page all through this journey of studying so now I'm going to pay it forward. I was mostly a B and B+ student throughout nursing school. My studying might have been a bit excessive, but I didn't want to have to take this test more than once.
I took Kaplan, and finished every single question offered, and read ever rationale. Everything I never heard of I looked up in Sylverstri and took notes on it. If I got a question on the same topic again, I would go back and look it up again and rewrite it. Then, once a week or more I would set aside time to review my notes.
Then, I finished all the chapters in Lacharity on the evolve site, except the last 2 because I never got to them. I looked up everything from lacharity that I never heard of and read every single rationale.
Then, a week before my exam I made index cards on lab values and studied all the EKGs on the ACLS site and googled diff looking pic of EKGs in case I got something weird (I only had one on the test with labs and one EKG), but if I had more I would have been relieved I did.
I didn't study any meds except what came up in Kaplan and lacharity and looked them up and their side affects and took notes on these too. I kept a binder on all my results. I also watched all the kaplan videos that I scored low in on the first 4 kaplan trainers. I found the one on child dvmt very helpful because my school had no class on pediatrics at all and I had 2 ques on children development on my exam so I was glad I did. The NCLEX questions were easier than kaplan in my opinion except for the fact that 50 out of my 75 question exam was SATA and I am terrible at these so if you are too, do not sweat it because I obviously still passed. Also, a few days before my exam I was nervous because I scored a 39 on Question trainer 7 in the health promotion section, so I was worried and was not surprised when I had 4 questions in maternity on my exam because this was my weak subject.
I studied 4-10 hrs a day, 6 days a week. It was excessive what I did and IDK if I rly needed to do that, but I was determined. I also used the 35 page review circulating around this site. I only finished the first 20 pages but those were my God send when it came to the safety and infection questions! Highly recommend reading it. I put together 2 little notebooks of notes and a binder I put everything important I needed to look at.
IF you have any questions, let me know, because many people on this site were very helpful to me when I had questions so I am glad to do the same for others. I honestly thought I failed because the questions didn't seem too bad other than the SATA so it is not undoable! You can do it too!!
