Hurst? Kaplan? OR Both?

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  1. Hurst, Kaplan or Both

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Our instructors are practically insisting that we take both Hurst AND Kaplan review sessions upon graduation. (While at the same time maintaining that it is optional that we do them) (To opt out we have to go have an entire meeting about how we don't need to opt out and list all the reasons we don't want to participate)

I want to do Hurst Live Review and am already signed up for that one.

But I am currently set up for a meeting with the head of my program to opt out of Kaplan review.

Please tell me your thoughts on these review programs.

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I did both the Kaplan and Hurst

Reviews (neither of which were live). I completed all of the questions in the Kaplan qBank as well.

I passed NCLEX with 75 questions and relative ease.

If I had to choose just one, I'd stick with Kaplan. However, if you can afford it- why not do both and be super prepared??

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Thanks. Do you mind sharing why you would pick Kaplan over Hurst?

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Hey Catzilla!

I decided to do Kaplan and Hurst (both of which are Online). I just finished watching all the Hurst Content videos and am currently working on the Kaplan QTrainers and QBank. Did you go through the content videos of Kaplan? Or did you just utilize the Kaplan questions?

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Thanks. Do you mind sharing why you would pick Kaplan over Hurst?

For me, I felt that the Kaplan questions were very, very similar to the NCLEX.

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Hey Catzilla!

I decided to do Kaplan and Hurst (both of which are Online). I just finished watching all the Hurst Content videos and am currently working on the Kaplan QTrainers and QBank. Did you go through the content videos of Kaplan? Or did you just utilize the Kaplan questions?

Hi there,

The content videos were not something I found very helpful. I watched some of them though. I answered all of the Kaplan questions ...twice...I really wanted to guarantee that I'd only sit for that test once!!

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I see! I'm hoping I pass the first time, which is why I'm utilizing as much of the best resources as I can!

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No one has offered us a Kaplan option without the Live Review attached.

I am contacting Kaplan to see if they can offer me the online tests without including the Live Review.

Thanks for letting me know that is apparently an option.

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I did hurst review first then did kaplan question bank, I graduated 5yrs ago with a bachelors degree outside the usa and past nclex with 75 questions first time! I had a friend who didn't want to spend the money and ended up taking the nclex 3 times, she could've saved herself all those tears, and for the 3rd time she paid for both hurst and kaplan and passed!

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Wow! Congrats CarrotCake! That's amazing! I'm utilizing both Hurst and Kaplan right now! I finished watching ALL of the Hurst content videos and they weren't as much as a pain in the butt as watching the Kaplan videos. Like you, I'm utilizing Hurst for content and Kaplan for their wonderful QBank and QTrainers!

May I ask how you utilized both Kaplan and Hurst resources and how long you've prepared before taking the exam? And did you feel confident walking out of the NCLEX?

Thanks for your help! Any helpful tips/advice would also be greatly appreciated. I take my exam on the last week of Feb. I'm praying God allows me to pass :)

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We had reps from both Kaplan and Hurst come to our school to try to encourage us to sign up for their courses. I personally took neither, but our school had ATI built into the curriculum, so I didn't feel additional prep was necessary. Some of my classmates took Hurst or Kaplan (no one took both), and it seems like all of us are passing in 75, regardless of which prep course (or none) we took.

To help you make up your mind, Hurst and Kaplan approach NCLEX prep very differently.

Hurst focuses on content. They don't try to re-teach nursing school, but they do try to help you remember and apply the information that is most likely to be on the exam.

Kaplan focuses on strategy. They've been doing this a long time with the SAT, so their focus is more on reading the questions, narrowing down the answers, and choosing from those two answers you were going back and forth on.

My guess is that your instructors want you to take both because the companies each cover different, and important, aspects of the test. Personally, that seems like overkill to me, and makes me wonder how well they have prepared you during the course of your program. If you feel confident in content and weak in strategy, use Kaplan. If you feel confident in dissecting questions but have content areas that just aren't sticking in your head, Hurst might be a better fit.

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Wow! Congrats CarrotCake! That's amazing! I'm utilizing both Hurst and Kaplan right now! I finished watching ALL of the Hurst content videos and they weren't as much as a pain in the butt as watching the Kaplan videos. Like you, I'm utilizing Hurst for content and Kaplan for their wonderful QBank and QTrainers!

May I ask how you utilized both Kaplan and Hurst resources and how long you've prepared before taking the exam? And did you feel confident walking out of the NCLEX?

Thanks for your help! Any helpful tips/advice would also be greatly appreciated. I take my exam on the last week of Feb. I'm praying God allows me to pass :)

I passed in 75 questions on Friday, and my experience mirrored that of my classmates. Almost everyone is passing in 75 questions from my program, yet no one feels confident walking out of the NCLEX.

It's a computer adaptive test (as I'm sure you know), so as you get better at answering, the questions get harder. When the computer shuts off, the questions SHOULD be hard. The tricky part is determining if the questions seem hard because you're doing well so the computer is giving you questions with a high degree of difficulty or if the questions seem hard because you are not well prepared and you're struggling with questions under the difficulty threshold.

I was struggling with a lot of my questions towards the end. I knew many of my classmates had passed with 75, but I was having such trouble, I mentally prepared myself for the computer to keep going. I was shocked when it shut off, as in, at first I literally didn't know what was happening and thought something was wrong with the computer. But the more I thought about it over the weekend, the more confident I became that I passed. It wasn't because I think my answers were accurate, but because when I thought back to the questions themselves, I realized they were very complex. And that's a very good sign.

I really think a key element is to stay calm during the test. It's easy to get thrown when you see a disease you can't quite remember or a drug you've never heard of. But if you resist the urge to blindly guess, there are often clues in the question to help you eliminate at least a few of the answers, and narrow it down so you've got at least a 50/50 shot. In my case, just knowing I was going to have many questions I would't positively know the answers to really helped me keep my focus.

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