AANP-Pass

VexFNP · May 13, 2017

I used this site a lot for study tips for the AANP, so I figured I'd chime in and tell you guy's about my experience. I Just passed it yesterday, and the exam definitely felt harder than I was expecting. Spent a total of 2 months studying, I needed a ton of content/material review since my program never had any cumulative finals.

I started off my blowing through the Leik book in about a week just to get my feet wet. Some of her information is outdated, but her exam tips are excellent.
I then bought the Fitzgerald online FNP review. I went through it at my own pace, the book you get with it is really good. You follow along her lectures with the book. I found her online lectures annoying since she would keep going off on tangents about her clinical practice. As soon as you hear her say "I" you just tune her out. Her book provided material well organized and up to date though.
I did the FNP Certication Exam review by Fitzgerald after that. It was a dry and heavy read, which I think I could have skipped.
I then read the Leik book again at a slower pace and really started getting the material down at this point.
Week before the exam: I went through 5 ExamEdge tests, I passed them all with a score around 600, not really that good. I bought the APEA patient management test bank which was I think 1300 questions and was passing with 70%. I would go through the exams and write down notes I got wrong. Last 2 days before the exam I bought the Adult Gero PSI practice exam and the FNP PSI practice exam and did them and passed them both with 80%+. Passing the PSI exams was a great confidence booster. I actually had 3 questions on the exam straight from the practice exams.
The actual exam: First few questions were rough, throughout all the review material all the sources tell you don't worry about OB too much. I would say have a decent knowledge base here though I had numerous OB questions. I also had a ton of Derm. I used up all the time for the exam and had 45 questions marked which I got enough time to review. Most of the time you could narrow the answers down to 2 options, and after that I basically guessed. When the exam ended I had no idea how I did, I wasn't expecting to have such a hard time with it. I was incredibly relieved soon after though.
Now I have to figure out what to do to get everything official, since my program was online didn't have much guidance on that.