Been out of a NY Community College for a year. I passed the RN-NCLEX 1'st try with 90 ?'s!

About me: Praying Christian! Proud NY State Community College graduate, with my Associates degree. RN. I had to repeat a Nursing class so instead of graduating in May 2014 with my class (bummer) I had to wait to retake the class until the fall. I successfully passed the class in October 2014. I decided to wait to test. Very bad idea I know! So finally I got my life together or my butt in gear . I was very nervous, I knew it had been a mistake to have waited so long. However doing some random thing on NCSBN website I stumbled across the Learning Ext. Review. I checked it out. I read the testimonials from NCSBN, and I checked for reviews on allnurses.com too (some of the older reviews on allnurses about NCSBN Learning ext. are inaccurate). I decided to try it out because it was affordable. I could not afford Kaplan or Hurst . I am so glad I did!! Here is what I did the 6 weeks leading up to my exam.

Practice questions: I did a total of around 2,000.

Prayer: Free! I prayed often. I prayed before, and during studying, and during the exam. I asked my church, family, and facebook friends to pray for me! It works folks.

NCSBN Learning Ext.: Wow I needed a comprehensive review and I got it. I didn't feel overwhelmed like when I looked at my Saunders review book... NCSBN was broken down into doable segments, and I just loved all those green check marks. I committed myself to the five week schedule, and finished. I did all the practice question/banks (my scores on the practice ?'s were not great sometimes only 40 but mostly 60-70s, but I passed my nclex anyway so it did not really matter that they were so low). I read every rationale (highly recommend reading rationales even the ones you get right). If I still wanted more information I searched the ?'s reference # and read Susan's (Ask the Instructor) response. I decided early on that I needed to practice question strategies more on that later. The NCLEX style practice questions from NCSBN are very like the ones you will see on the exam! They also have free online pharmacology flashcards.

Kaplan: only read through an older used (2012-2013) library copy of their strategy book and did the 180 questions practice exam on the cd. I did practice using those strategies. The strategies did help somewhat on the exam and I do recommend knowing and using them. However I feel that without the review and over 1300 practice questions from NCSBN I would not have passed.

Prioritization, Delegation, and Assignment by LaCharity: Okay almost any search about what to study for the rn-nclex and this book or its initials PDA come up. I did not have time to get through this book, which was once again a older second edition copy I got off ebay. I did get through about 200 questions. However NCSBN had plenty PDA questions too, so don't feel like you need to do this book if you do NCSBN. However I recommend this book, it does not need to be a new edition used is just as good. I did like the this book for extra practice on these types of questions.

Free online Materials to Google: Math dosage, drip rate calculations I found a great free practice exam on mightynurse. Mnemonics and acronyms from istudentnurse. Kaplan question trainer like questions (which I did not do) on Quizlet. Smita Sharma has some great free links on her blog.

In closing: I praise God that he blessed me, and because of Him I can now say that I am an RN! I highly recommend NCSBN Learning Ext. I am so grateful for a complete, affordable, and successful review program with a lot of nclex style practice questions. My review items cost me under a $100 dollars this includes NCSBN. I took my RN-NCLEX exam in NY State after being out of school for over nine months. I passed in 90 questions on my first attempt. I sincerely thank NCSBN and hope my testimonial will help others as they go through the process of deciding what to review with, and what to focus on. A combination of Prayer, review, practice questions, and strategies were the combination that worked best for me. Everyone is different. My goal in writing this is to give you hope that even if you have been out of school for awhile, or don't have lots of money for a review, or whatever situation you find yourself in don't give up. You can do this!