Kaplan vs Hurst Review Courses

cardiacnurse1 · Sep 25, 2011

I just got news that I passed the NCLEX!!! These were my scores on the Hurst Q Review: 62%, 64%, 58%, 67%, 70%, 68%. I always went over the questions, answers, and rationales after each test.

Hi Tetris Queen.

I am currently using Hurst. I just finished the lectures and I also printed all of the worksheets for each system and worked on it while I was listening. My plan is to re-listen to the lectures again. Did you study any of the 5th day materials as well? I am also working on the 6 exams that is available. So far I am scoring a 58% on the 1st one, then 62% on the second one. I love Marlene. She is so awesome to listen to. Anyways, any tips is greatly appreciated....Congratulations on passing Nclex. :up: :nurse: :yeah: :yeah: :yeah: :yeah:

pitaya · Sep 25, 2011

Hey!

My school paid for Kaplan, so I did Kaplan, but I felt like it wasn't enough of a content review for me, so I also bought Hurst!

Kaplan goes over test-taking strategies and they have a decision tree for answering questions that some students find helpful, but I thought the decision tree was the same type of strategies that I already use in my head, just more clearly defined. I personally did not find the Kaplan course very helpful to me. The Kaplan course with a live instructor just went over the strategies and then it was 4 days of going over question after question out loud with the whole class using the decision tree. I was annoyed because I would rather have gone over content, but Kaplan makes it clear that it is not a content-based course and that strategies are better to pass NCLEX, but I really really wanted a content review. That being said, the Kaplan Qbank and Qtrainer questions online are extremely helpful!!! The NCLEX questions are so much like the Kaplan questions and the Kaplan questions are way harder than any other questions I ran across in other NCLEX study sources. I would recommend going over all of the Kaplan Qbank and Qtrainer questions before taking the NCLEX.

As for Hurst, wow, I loved the online videos! The instructor, Marlene, was very entertaining (and that just couldn't be said for the online Kaplan instructors) and it was awesome to go over just the necessary content in a short amount of time. This was an awesome refresher. I had originally intended to read the whole Saunders book and/or the whole Kaplan course book, but I was so burnt out on reading, that I decided videos would be the way to go. I ended up hardly reading anything and only had time to go over the Hurst videos once, but I still passed!

Also, I had done almost 5,000 questions total by the time I took the NCLEX. Like I said before, though, the Kaplan questions were the best. The other questions were too easy. I passed the NCLEX with 75 questions. About 15 of them were select-all-that-apply. I felt like the content wasn't anything that I had studied, but by being able to get passing scores on Kaplan, I figured I could get a passing score on NCLEX. And I did and I have a job now, so it all worked out. :) I'm currently selling all my NCLEX books and such on half.com...haha....so excited to get rid of them!

fmAtoZ&backagain · Sep 26, 2011

tetris_queen how many questions took you to pass the nclex?

fmAtoZ&backagain · Sep 26, 2011

I was at Hurst and I did not like it it was way to superficial... Kaplan gives you a book that reviews everything plus the videos... I will go for kaplan, the questions at Hurst are 6 tests, but does not give you a perspective how you doing against the test... well that's me

Tetris_Queen · Sep 27, 2011

Everyone has different opinions of NCLEX reviews. Just find one that is suited to your needs. I chose Hurst because I knew I needed a refresher on the material. I studied the whole book including the peds sections and I read a couple of the documents of the 5th day and focused on the questions.

As far as how many questions, I don't think it is important. Just be prepared to take all 265. Of course, you want to be done with 75, but if you are "still taking the test that means you are still in it or they would have cut you off already." - M. Hurst.

LVN/RNBridge · Nov 3, 2011

I have taken Kaplan live and it was alright, just a little slow for me. I suppose too much time spent on each question when I was ready to move on. I do like q-bank with Kaplan as I log in every day and take 50 questions. In addition, I registered for Hurst online and I can only tell you that my experience is that I have learned more with Hurst than I did the entire time I was in nursing school! Everyone is different, but if you like entertaining/comedy and this style helps you to learn? this is a great course for you. I love it and only wish I had heard of it right after graduation! I am watching the videos for the second time this week :-) I hope this helps!