I've been on allnurses for a few years now, it helped me thru nursing school and DEFINITELY helped me pass my nclex with all the advice and well wishes going on, I said if I passed ill definitely make a post to help others!
Ok little back story I graduated in June 2013, I was so emotionally and mentally drained from nursing school I kept putting my test off! I enjoyed my summer and my family had a huge party for myself ( for graduating school) and my sister ( 21st birthday) , I neglected my friends for literally a year and wanted to catch up with them, spend time with my boyfriend, all the things you can't do while in nursing school, and then honestly I got sooo lazy! Everyday id say "ill study tomorrow" until I got to November and so many of my classmates had taken their boards and passed I said OH NO! Time to get back on the ball! So I gave myself until after thanksgiving! So December 1st I started, I picked up my exam cram book and couldn't answer 1 question in that book! Everything was so hard, I thought wow a lot of the content I learned for school was in the back of my mind, so I made the choice to go threw my Saunders 4 the edition (green book) and brush up on content, I did about 1-3 chapters a day, depending on how long the chapter were, then I did questions on that subject! For example if I did the respiratory chapter I would do questions from the Saunders CD and on nclex 3500 ( free site with 3000 questions! I also had the Kaplan qbank only! Also the study guide that goes around on this site! That study guide is honestly amazing and helped so much
Ok fast forward to my test! I took my test Feb 12. I have never been so scared in all my life! Before, during and after that test! In all honesty my test was hard, although my computer stopped at 99 I prayed to GOD during the test to please help me, I had to make some guesses, a lot of med questions I wasn't familiar with, a lot of priority, a lot of patient teaching. I honestly thought I failed, and while I was driving home,all I was thinking was man I'm going to have to drive up here again in 45 days to take this test again , I don't know where to start studying again, what I should do or where I went wrong, but I tried the trick and to my surprise I had the good pop up! Boy was a relieved ( sorry this is so long)
Ok to sum everything up here is what I did!
Saunders 4th edition green book- you have to know your content, if you don't your content you cant understand what's being asked, I kno the book is big and intimidating but I honestly didn't do every single chapter, I skipped a lot of the peds and some maternity chapters
Exam cram - the questions in this book weren't easy but it closely resembles the nclex in my opinion
Kaplan q bank- if you have the money and know your content I HIGHLY recommend getting the qbank, this resembles nclex down to the same exact screen you will see when you take your exam, some of the questions in the qbank are ridiculously hard but the structure of the questions really helped
Study guide on this site- very very helpful, I read it twice and two nights before my test
Nclex 3500 ( free website with 3000 questions) I love this site, the questions are great and so are the rationales , I preferred doing questions on here than on the Saunders CD
And most importantly Pray Pray Pray and believe in yourself ! You can do it, if u go in with a positivity attitude you'll have positive results! Speak it into existence!!! Goodluck to all the future nurses
