ATI or Kaplan for NClex- what helped me!

[KristinaC]

I recently took my NClex for the first time and fortunately passed with 80 questions. The school I attended required ATI and Virtual ATI after graduation. I had a grant that also paid for Kaplan. I took the Kaplan class one week after graduation, the in person class, and then started on Virtual ATI about a week after that. I was struggling with ATI (50-60% on the assessments) and on the Kaplan Question Trainers I was in the 80 and 90%, which my instructor told me was higher than her scores. I asked ATI if they could explain why I was doing so poorly on their assessments, but they could not. I worried for two months that I was not going to pass, more pressure was added when I was offered my dream position a month after graduation, I went back and thought I was missing something in every area, even fundamentals. I printed off 45 pages of fluid and electrolytes the night before NClex and remember one magnesium question on NClex. I did do 69% of the Kaplan QBank as well, which I felt was very beneficial. Our school wants everyone to wait for the "green light" from ATI before taking NClex, however when it takes up to 12 hours or more to get a code to do any assessments it can be very time consuming, in addition I did not find that the focus review is any where near as helpful as having the rationales (read the correct ones and the incorrect ones) available as you are taking the assessments. If you do not score where Virtual ATI wants you to score on the Predictor you also have to wait 2 weeks for them to give you a new code. Needless to say I did not wait for the green light, I did work on Kaplan and nothing else and as I said passed in 80 questions with numerous SATA and math calculations. I finished with a 3.2 GPA, so average and want to advise people to NOT wait 2 months to take their boards. You can never know what content to study, you need to know how to take the exam. Good luck to everyone getting ready to take theirs in the near future!!!