I passed the AANP exam today!

rehric00 · Aug 30, 2017

I just wanted to share my experience with everyone, because when I was preparing for this exam, I was looking for resources on what other people did....

So I graduated August 4th. I pretty much wrapped up my clinicals and final semester the first week of July. I honestly did not open a book from the time I was done with clinicals, until I scheduled my test. Would I recommend this to others? No. It was stressful. I got my authorization to test Aug 21. I scheduled my test Aug 30 because I just wanted to be done.

In general, I have been a good test taker so this worked for me...

I bought the Fitzgerald book a while back while I was still in school. I did not use the book much, but I did like the online question bank. The rationales are not great, but I used the program sometimes- like when I was at work and had some down time.

I bought a question book from the APEA, that was basically all questions and rationales. I used this resource the most. I loved their rationales, because they not only explained why the right answer was "right", but also why the wrong answers were "wrong".

I bought the 2016 version of the Barkley CDs with the booklet on Ebay for around $70. I considered taking the class, but I did not want to spend $600, given that there probably wasn't THAT MUCH different info from 2016 to 2017. I listened to the discs over the course of 4 days... Tuesday through Friday. The 2016 version had both JNC 7 and JNC 8 guidelines, so that helped.

I bought 2 predictor exams from APEA. I took one after I listened to the CDs and scored a 72%- which was "passing". I did the practice tests in the back of the APEA book, and did kinda poorly on those, but the rationales helped me realize where I went wrong. On Monday, I took my second APEA online predictor test and got a 83%, which was again "passing".

Tuesday (yesterday), I purchased the AANP practice test- 75 questions- for $50. I got an 85% on that. I did not study much the day before the test. I went back over murmurs, some women's health stuff, and random odds and ends.

I rented the LEIK book from Amazon. I got it Friday.. I opened and closed it again. Too much info for this short amount of time... But I have heard it is good if you have time to ready it!

The day of the test, I ate a normal breakfast and made sure to get to the testing site with time to spare. I used the bathroom twice and started the test. I thought it was pretty difficult. There are a lot on the test that was not covered in Barkley (but, I would still highly recommend his review... it was great!). I felt like I had guessed on about half of the material. In the end, I thought for sure I had failed. I went to check out and got my print out, and it said that I had passed.

If you are generally not a great test taker or struggled in school, I would not recommend cramming. However, if you were a strong student throughout the program, stay focused and have the right tools, you can pass the test with one week of prep. Let me know if I can help answer any questions, because I know how stressful planning for this test is! Good luck to everyone else preparing to take it soon!