Failed twice. Trying Kaplan ?

Korosensei · Mar 5, 2016

How was your study schedule like before you took the nclex?

how much were you studying a day?

catmom713 · Mar 5, 2016

4-5 hours a day. About a month or so before. My husband works 70 hours a week and I stay home with my 9 month old so it's hard to do anymore then that

Flnolegirl · Mar 5, 2016

Kaplan is good for strategy and but I prefer Uworld because their rationales go in depth vs. Kaplan.... I'm currently using both along with the 35 pg. study guide floating around and heard amazing things about Mark Klimeck....

PocketSize, BSN, RN · Mar 5, 2016

My friend tried Kaplan and really liked it- said it was really helpful. She passed the first time in 75 so it's worth a try!

Deep breath, you got this :)

pinkpanther89 · Mar 6, 2016

Kaplan helped me pass. I got some good strategies and confidence from the program. Just ways to approach a question even if i didn't know the topic.

catmom713 · Mar 6, 2016

That's kinda what I'm thinking. Nclex is just such a different type of test I feel like I would benifit from the testing strategies. Did you feel like their practice questions were like nclex ?

pinkpanther89 · Mar 6, 2016

Hey. I honesty felt as if the question trsiners were similar difficulty to the nclex. Especially the last one. Their questions really made you think which I had to do a lot of on the nclex. I think t would be a great source if you do it the way they say which is the # of questions per day and also remediate every exam right or wrong. The rationales are not that great BUT it helped.

Lpak8181 · Mar 7, 2016

I did kaplan after failing twice before. I took kaplan before my 3rd attempt. I passed this time (yay!) but I don't think it was all from Kaplan. Kaplan helped as far as having access to a lot of questions for practice and learning their strategies. I've been out of school for a bit over a year so my issue was content. I watched all of the videos by Michael Linares on youtube, and I really feel like that's what really helped more than anything. I did 75 questions a day for 3 weeks, and watched all the videos while taking notes. I sat my husband down and taught the content back to him (because I feel like I remember better once I'm able to teach it to somebody). I had a string of questions in the beginning I did not study for and I think that dropped me down quite a bit before I picked back up to the passing line (questions about child abuse and what not that didn't have to do with pathophys). I had maybe a handful of SATA, no hot spots, or any other aside priority questions. I ended at 105. Good luck and hope this helped.

acer_ · Mar 7, 2016

I used Kaplan and passed my test with 75 questions. I agree with everyone when they say that kaplans rationales suck, because they do. With that said, I feel I benefited more from that because I was forced to look up things on my own. So personally I felt like I learned more by taking the time and looking up a topic. It was a slow process and I only finished 90% of the Qbank and all the Qtrainers in the month I spent studying though. Good luck!

deej394, BSN, MSN, RN · Mar 7, 2016

I agree that Kaplan is a useful tool. I used the Qbank, and took 75-125 questions a day. I would then look through most (not all) of the rationales. I also used hurst but I really don't think that helped me at all.

I would also recommend trying to go faster through the test. If you don't know an answer just pick on (or several for SATA) and move on. Sitting there thinking about it for 10 minutes isn't going to help you get the answer. And the test gives you plenty of time. You want to give yourself the opportunity to answer all 265 if need be.

kathrynaschwartz · Mar 9, 2016

Hi Catmom! I passed my NCLEX in January, I found that Kaplan was very useful and is well worth the money. Good luck!