I passed with 75, my experience

[ireyes98]

Disclaimer about myself, I graduated with a 3.5 from nursing and I am the type of person who needs to know the reasoning behind everything, which as many you know in nursing is an impossible task to accomplish during our schooling. I used 4 courses:

1. Kaplan (good for help on how to answer test questions)

2. Hurst (they do a pretty good content review on the essentials to know on all areas of nursing school)

3. NCSBN (Personally, i found that one overwhelming, it reviewed everything in nursing school to the smallest detail, the test questions were tough but helpful if you catch on to how they word their questions and how they expect you to answer)

4. HESI (Good questions to review).

I also saved all of my notes since the start of nursing school and reviewed them from start to finish. I passed on my first try this August with 75 questions, but I definitely feel like I over-studied and overwhelmed myself for nothing.

Moral of the story, there's a lot of resources out there, and they all have their own qualities. It mostly depends on what you feel you need the most help on, either content review, or test taking strategies, or etc. I suggest you stick to one or maybe even two, because you can overwhelm yourself with information and end up studying for much longer than you needed to. You will never feel fully prepared to take the NCLEX. Go in there with the mindset and goal to answer 265 questions and kick ass. Getting through nursing school is a more difficult task than passing the nclex. So far for 2016, according to NCSBN, the passing rate for first timers is 85%, not too bad if you ask me. I'm sure you will all do great, happy studying.

[ireyes98]

If you need help with pharm there's a free app on the mobile store that breaks it all down pretty good. It contains common drug classes, drugs associated with the classes (generic and brand name because NCLEX only uses generic names), and all of the information school, clinicals, and the NCLEX requires you to know such as MOA's, vitals, labs, common/severe side effects and nursing considerations to watch for. Check it out, its called NCLEX Drug Study Guide or the website nclexessentials.barcalabs.com. Best of luck!